I thought I'd fill you in on the latest with our daughter and her self-identity issues. The other day I wrote that she was wishing she had blonde hair and lighter eyes, which caused her mother and I much concern.
Well she seems to be dealing better with that issue. Her mother and I tried an interesting strategy that seems to have helped. Not soon after our daughter's pronouncement of wishing she had more anglo traits, she also informed us that she wanted to be in beauty pageants and that this was one of the reasons she wanted the blonde hair, light eyes and lighter skin tone.
My wife and I saw our opening. We pulled down from the Internet pictures of the last two Miss USA's and the last two Miss Universes. We knew what she would see and indeed it caught our daughter off guard. The last two Miss USA's are African-American and Mixed, both with brown skin, dark hair and dark eyes. Last year's Miss Universe is from Japan, dark hair, tanned non-pale skin and dark eyes. And the most recent Miss Universe is from Venezuela with brown skin, dark hair (when she doesn't dye it) and green eyes. The only one in the bunch with non-dark eyes.
Our daughter actually had a big smile on her face when she looked at the pictures.
But the true sign that this helped her was I found her yesterday writing a letter to "American Girl Magazine" in which she told me she was writing about how she used to want to look different but once she saw the recent beauty pageant winners, and that they too had dark hair, brown skin and dark eyes (mostly) she was happy with herself.
I was quite pleased.
Needless to say I know this is not the end of her issues and that the pendulum is likely to swing many more times on her self-image. And dealing with the downsides of what beauty pageant images can do to a child's sense of self in terms of beauty in general and weight issues as well. But for now, I have to at least be glad that these pageants have accepted a wider ideal of beauty at least in terms of skin color and hair color. It certainly proved to have an impact on our daughter.
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4 comments:
I'm so relieved your efforts showed your little girl that she represents a form of beauty equal to the mainstream standards. Seeing her photo in the earlier posting, I see a very cute girl with beautiful ebony spirals and every possibility of being a stunning woman. May she never change a thing until she gets to see that!
Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm a silent subscriber to you, but I'm commenting now. I'm so glad your daughter found the beauty of herself. That blonde-white girl, look is so overrated and really confuses girls of all different nationalities and looks into thinking they have to be like that to succeed in anything they want to do. I'm glad she knows that she can do that just they way she is.
Thanks to both of you on your support. This is tough. Obviously I, like most brown skinned people, had to deal with this as well, but it is harder when you watch your child go through it. This is also true because it is so sad that 30 years or so after we went through it, we haven't been able to keep it from happening to another generation. Maybe her kids 30 years from now won't have to go through it. Let's hope.
Excellent, I'm glad that worked out!
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