How You Can Help Your Daughters Find Their Inner Beauty!
At a very young age, our daughters feel rushed to grow-up and be “beautiful”. Our television 
programs and the media promote female images of beauty and success that are almost humanly impossible to achieve without Photoshop and editing. There are too many advertisements that promote physical beauty over inner beauty and make-up instead of the contributions our daughters can make. What messages are being sent to our little girls? How can we help our daughters become confident and self-reliant with so many disturbing messages?
The Kind Is Beautiful Campaign for Inner Beauty
Tiffany Coleman has created the Kind Is Beautiful campaign (see http://kindisbeautiful.com/kindness-can-change-beauty). This campaign uses resources like journals, stationery and inspirational bracelets that help our daughters reflect on their inner strengths and beauty. Her journals include many different questions, activities, and the following reflective messages:
- Make room for all the beautiful things in life.
- Discover your inner beauty.
- Let your outer beauty sparkle.
How Kindness Becomes Action
I love these journals because I can talk to my granddaughters about how wonderful they are. We can write together about the wonder in their lives. They can discover and reflect on their dreams for success. The duality of my granddaughters’ abilities to expand their outer beauty and define their inner beauty in journal writing is inspiring.
For example, my granddaughter Rosie is participating in an animal rescue camp this summer. She is caring for many different animals daily and learning about their attributes and how to raise healthy pets. Rosie is very excited about rat day because she appreciates the inner and unexpected beauty in rats. Her outer beauty sparkles with her love of rats and appreciation of their incredible instinctive intelligence. I am excited to help my granddaughter journal her story and feelings. Rosie can happily read this story later in life when she encounters experiences that make her doubt herself.
The journals can also help our daughters reflect on their fears about not being good enough or beautiful enough. They can learn how to overcome these fears with self-love and kindness when writing their thoughts.
Please share your thoughts in how you help your daughters overcome their fears of failure and not being beautiful enough in the comments section below. Many of your ideas will be shared on the Kind Is Beautiful website to inspire others in their journey of self-love and kindness.
Warm regards,
Mary Ann
Copyright (c) 2017 by GenParenting
Mary Ann Burke, Ed.D., Digital Education Expert, is a substitute distance learning teacher for Oak Grove School District in San Jose, California and the author of STUDENT-ENGAGED ASSESSMENT: Strategies to Empower All Learners (Rowman & Littlefield: 2020). Dr. Burke creates digital language arts and substitute teaching K – 12 activities for teachers and parents. She is the Cofounder of the Genparenting.com blog. Burke is the former Director II of Categorical & Special Projects for the Santa Clara County Office of Education that supports 31 school districts serving 272,321 students in Santa Clara County. She is also a previous Director – State & Federal Compliance for Oakland Unified School District, the former Director – Grantwriter for the Compton Unified School District, and was the initial VISTA Director for the Community Partnership Coalition in southern California. Much of her work focuses on creating innovative digital trainings and partnership programs for teachers and families to support students’ learning. These programs were featured as a best practice at a National Title I Conference, California’s Title I Conferences, AERA Conferences, an ASCD Conference, the NASSP Conference, and statewide educator conferences.
I love this topic! I always tried to show my daughters that I was proud of their efforts and their goodness. I tried not to comment frequently on their appearance. (In general, with little girls, I try to avoid the impulse to go on about how cute they are). However, the popular culture and media are powerful. During the teen years, especially, we parents have a lot to counter!
Hi Janis,
We are excited about our new partnership with the Kind Is Beautiful campaign. We look forward to writing several more blogs on this topic throughout the year as we journal in partnership with our daughters and granddaughters.
Warm regards,
Mary Ann