Modern Motherhood: This One’s For My Girls (And Yours)

Today I board a plane. 

Tomorrow I will be sitting on a panel of women from across North America discussing the sexualization of Halloween costumes for young girls. We’re talking with Glenn Beck, who might not be the first person who comes to mind when you think about this issue. But that is the point: to get more people involved.

To get EVERYONE involved that I possibly can.

As I pack Spanx and makeup and hair products in my suitcase, I feel the guilt and hypocrisy weigh heavy on my shoulders.

As I wish I could have lost ten or fifteen pounds before all of these television appearances started happening, and wonder about the woman sitting next to me on the panel. Will she be prettier than me? Thinner?

I was confident about my words and my message when I agreed to this trip, but not nearly as comfortable about what I should wear.

What does that say about the way we treat women? Girls? 

That I am so conditioned to worry about the way I will look and be judged that I almost forgot to be excited for this amazing opportunity. 

I know the comments will come. They already have, and they will continue. I know this, and I can handle it. 

I don’t particularly care what you think about my body or my face, but I will be damned if I let my daughters or yours grow up in a world that judges them that way without doing everything I possibly can to stop it. 

And I’ll be damned even further if I let them start doing it to themselves. 

We are planting seeds. 

The ones we nurture, they will grow.

 There is more to our girls than the way they look.   

There is more to every woman than the way that she looks. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be attractive, put your best self forward, or even be seen as sexy, if you are a grown woman capable of making those choices for yourself. 

But that is the dilemma of modern motherhood: how do we raise girls who are confident in their bodies, who respect themselves, but also know that they are so much more than just those bodies?  

Our daughters are not accessories to dress up and put on display. 

They are scientists and teachers and artists in the making. 

They need to learn how to be recognized for who they are, not how they look. 

However, that is not the message that we send. We do not practice what we preach. 

It is not the message of the ridiculously sexualizing Halloween costumes I will be discussing tomorrow. It is not the message of the half-naked women on the magazine covers. 

But do you know what? 

It’s also not the message of the well-meaning stranger at the grocery store who asks my son what he is learning in school, then turns to my daughter and tells her she has very pretty hair, and walks away. 

It’s not the message behind, “You look so cute today! I bet that dress is great for twirling!”

Those kinds of comments may be fine in moderation, but when the conversation starts and stops with how our daughters look, what are we saying really? 

Where does the worth of a woman lie?

(Hint: Not between anyone’s sheets.)  

So, I will take my chubby arms and my one crooked tooth, and I will march onto that set tomorrow. I do not promise to be comfortable, but I promise I will show up, and I will speak up. 

For your daughters and for mine. 

 This is only one step in a much bigger journey. There is a larger project coming, and I will need your help. If you want to get involved, please follow along on my Binkies and Briefcases Facebook page. I will be letting you in on some more secrets very soon!