31 December 2013

All my life, I have wanted to be pretty.  Pretty hot, pretty smart, pretty cool, pretty popular, pretty successful, pretty, pretty, pretty.  I have alternately starved myself, painted myself, frozen in too little clothing, dumbed myself down for mass consumption and lost myself to depression in the search for the elusive pretty nod.  And I saw nothing wrong with it.  What's especially sad is these falsifications of myself weren't considered particularly unacceptable by those around me either.  There was, of course, a handful (frontlined by my mother in most cases) who knew I could be "better".

The problem is, for a girl raised on "pretty", better is synonymous.  I just had to be prettier.  I didn't equate better with having a healthier self esteem, social life or relationships.  I saw better as an attainment of status I had failed to achieve. 

Enter my daughter.  Elodie.  Perfect upon arrival, special.  I loved her always, and all ways, but my favourite was when she was calm, watching us with those hazy grey-blue baby eyes.  She had such soft skin and mile long lashes and beautiful rosebud lips that would firmly press together as she contemplated the world around her.  

And the pretty started to flow.  What a pretty baby!  Such a pretty darling!  What a pretty little doll!  Look at how pretty she is!  As if this was affirming that I was a good parent already because I had produced pretty offspring.  

As I became aware of it, so I caught myself doing it, too.  The pretties rolled off my tongue to fall not only on my daughter, but the babies at the store, the daughters of my friends, dropping like shiny cut glass, completely worthless and useless and pretty.  

And those pretties became limits in my mind.  My daughter isn't pretty smart.  She is smart.  She is not pretty funny.  She is funny.  Elodie is not pretty good at making friends.  She is good at making friends.  She is not pretty.  She is.  It was quite a wakeup call.  As someone who had never considered myself sexist or a feminist, I was shocked how unintentionally yet overtly we limit the women in our own society by flinging pretty, pretty, pretty at them over and over.  The word has pervaded until, like the word "um", it is used as a filler and our girls hear it constantly.  And our boys hear it, too, and they in turn grow up limiting our girls' worth, unintentionally, overtly, with two vapid syllables.  

I now make a conscious effort to avoid the word pretty unless I'm referring to an animal or an inanimate object.  My daughter, and indeed all women, are so much more.