Yesterday my church had a short Valentine's Day party outreach for the families of the community. There was one little girl that I thought was just so beautiful, both in her adorable face and her quiet and polite spirit. But, I became sad. I thought, "When will this lovely girl start thinking she isn't good enough? That she must wear makeup to feel pretty? When will she feel like she has to expose her body to get men to like her?" And at that moment I wanted to protect her, and all children/teens from that. Then I asked myself what kind of example I am to them: Do I only feel pretty with makeup? Do I feel like I'm not good enough? It was eye opening and heart crushing.
This is half in reply to you, and another half is just my own thoughts and ramblings.
I feel like there's a catch 22 in how to prevent stuff like low self-esteem from happening. It's good to establish that we're made in the image of Christ and are more than our looks. When we emphasize it too much though, and too early on, especially with girls, they might start to wonder if something's wrong with them. Or maybe it was just me. So when it's too early, they might start asking too many questions, mainly about themselves. Start too late and they might not listen.
When I was in middle school, early on, I never really had thought much about my looks. I just did school, and after school I'd play outside or play a game. It was very rare that I thought that there was something "wrong" with my looks. In 6th or 7th grade I went to a young girls' conference about self-esteem and all that. I think it was the same time I also read a book with the youth group girls on self-esteem and guys.
I started thinking to myself,
"Now I don't need all this stuff. I don't have any issues with my self-esteem. I'm fine just the way I am." then I'd start to think,
"Or am I? " and it all goes downhill from there. Since then it's always been a battle between the heart, mind, and God. I'm the weird one out of the bunch though. In spite of the fact I've always struggled with self-esteem I never really tried to fix it with stuff like makeup. I only ever wear makeup 3-5 out of the 365 days of the year. Even then and even now I realized makeup is just a cover-up and I don't need it.
I mean, it's not that I didn't learn anything from the book or the conference. I learned a little bit. It inform me that the media will try to lie about who/what we're supposed to look like.
I just think that maybe we're trying too early on in life, before we really truly need it. It's good to be prepared in certain areas of our life. But maybe with stuff like this, it should be more, "We'll get there when we get there." and not teach it so soon?
Unfortunately, I can't speak for every girl out there. Some girls need conferences and books right away when start middle school because they're already starting to struggle with looks.
It's so hard to distinguish when the right time is to discuss this and encourage girls.
Okay, 'nuff rambling for me.
Hopefully I didn't bore you guys too much. If I did you probably just skipped over this anyways and aren't even reading this.