I have two teen girls and have seen first-hand how they cope with beauty anxiety. My oldest, Grasshopper and Sensei, refuses to play the beauty game. It took me years to get her to willingly shop for clothes so that she wouldn’t look like a slob. She still is not one for make up or personal grooming beyond running a brush through her long hair.
My middle daughter, PickyKidPix, is fascinated by beauty. She avidly follows more than four dozen beauty Vloggers and knows more about beauty products that I do. Most likely in retaliation for her sharp tongue, a boy hurt her feelings by telling her that she had a monobrow. She promptly starting tweezing her eyebrows to avoid this humiliation. She was in elementary school.
Beauty anxiety is felt by girls as young as ten years old. That’s sad, isn’t it? Dove’s research found:
- 9 out of 10 girls want to change at least one thing about their physical appearance.
- 72 percent of girls (ages 10-17) feel tremendous pressure to be beautiful.
- Only 11 percent of girls (ages 10-17) are comfortable using the word beautiful to describe themselves.
- When girls feel bad about their looks more than 60 percent globally (age 15 to 17) avoid normal daily activities such as attending school, going to the doctor or even giving their opinion.
Dove believes that everyone has the opportunity to make a difference in a girl’s self-esteem. I love their new film that encourages girls to realize they don’t need to change one thing about their appearance.
Dove is committed to creating a world where beauty is a source of confidence, not anxiety. The Dove Self-Esteem Project, which reached more than 17 million young people to date with self-esteem education, is launching a Pinterest page to provide free resources addressing today’s biggest barriers to a girl’s self-esteem. This includes ‘media and celebrity culture’ and ‘teasing and bullying’. Their Pinterest page allows every woman and girl to have a personal confidence-boosting board they can turn to when they need it most.
It’s easy to help girls with the pressures of a beauty culture that we all live in. Every time you choose Dove, you help support self-esteem building programs for girls. That’s something to feel good about!
Follow PragmaticMom’s board Parenting Share & Assist on Pinterest.
My books:
BEST #OWNVOICES CHILDREN’S BOOKS: My Favorite Diversity Books for Kids Ages 1-12 is a book that I created to highlight books written by authors who share the same marginalized identity as the characters in their books.
Such a sensitive time. But, she has a great role model!
Hi Patricia,
Thanks so much!! I’ve been working on one thing for my kids since birth and that is their self confidence because if you have that, you can overcome anything, even beauty anxiety and peer pressure.
I love this movement by Dove. We all need to learn how to be comfortable in our own skin, and to appreciate what we have.
Hi MaryAnne,
I agree. It’s especially such an important message for girls who get inundated with media showing girls and women objectified. Like at the Women’s World Cup in Vancouver, British Columbia, for example! At the awards ceremony, they had these young women in tight black dresses and stilletos barely able to walk on the turf with the awards. As one tweeter said, “They are objectifing women at their own World Cup!!” FIFA is idiotic!