When a little girl proudly emerges in an Elsa costume or accessorized with a chaotic amount of brightly colored jewelry, our first instinct is to tell her how beautiful she looks. At the same time, we want our daughters to see through the double standards that society places on them, including the belief that they’re better when they’re in expensive clothes and have their hair and makeup done. Life coach Rachelle Indra says it’s ok to acknowledge when our girls get all dolled up; it’s just that using the word ‘beautiful’ can end up doing more harm than good.
Luckily, a simple swap can make all the difference!
“Tell your daughters they’re ‘beautiful’ when they’re being authentic; tell them they look ‘fancy’ when they’re getting dressed up,” she says.
Indra explains how she came to this conclusion with a little anecdote from her time as a stepmom to little girls. “I remember my stepdaughters were very young, and they had dressed in these princess dresses and done their makeup and hair, and they were coming down the stairs. I was about to be like, ‘Well, don’t you look beautiful!’” But just then, her sister-in-law jumped in and told the girls instead that they “look so fancy!” Then she gave Indra a knowing little wink.
“Later she brought this up, this idea that when your daughters are trying a new sport or doing their homework or don’t have any makeup on or just existing and being authentically them, that’s when you tell them that they are beautiful.” These are the times when their beauty really shines through.
Related: 8 Things NOT to Say to Your Daughter
That being said, they still deserve some acknowledgment when they get done up and they’re feeling themselves, and that’s what we want to give them when we tell them how fancy they look. It’s totally great to love getting dressed up and wearing makeup and doing your hair (when you have the energy, of course), but Indra stresses that “that’s not the time to tell them that they are beautiful because that changes their brain chemistry to believe that they are only beautiful when they’re dressed up.”
And we all know that’s far from true!
So go ahead and acknowledge all of the amazingness that you see in your daughters, from their fearlessness on the monkey bars to the confidence it takes to wear a tiara every single day. Just be thoughtful about the language you use (they’ll thank you one day!).