Raising Kids on a Flawed View of Beauty

These days I can’t help but think about the version of beauty our kids are learning. Childhood is such a tender time, when impressions of the world and constructs of social acceptability are being learned every moment. Every day. Recently, my sister sent me a picture from Target. There it was, the magazine wrack in the checkout line. Who isn’t familiar with that quintessential checkout line display at the grocery store, Target, or airport? My sister knows I am unusually concerned with popular culture’s brand of beauty, so she kindly sent me that day’s version.

That picture was personal though. I knew my niece was with her. My three-year-old niece who I am simply in love with and fascinated by. Her brain fires so rapidly, coming up with the funniest one-liners and the most thoughtful questions about life. She is so impressionable. So gifted. So sensitive. I am well aware of the delicacy of her developing mind. So many questions, curiosities, perfect wondering as she tries to figure out the world and her place in it.

So, what was she absorbing as she looked at that Target magazine wrack, that genre of wrack she will be seeing so often as she grows up? Well she would learn that “Women’s Health” means that you “Reach your body goals. Abs. Arms. Legs. Butt. Everything!” She would learn the word “Anorexic.” She would learn about the Turbo Keto diet and how to “drop 21 lbs in 9 days.” And she would see a magazine for women called Shape.

My heart dropped.

So, this is the version of “beauty” she will learn about. This is the version of beauty she is learning about. And this is the version of beauty I am convinced needs some major revamping. In fact, I think this is a tear down job. We need a new version of beauty. An expanded version of beauty. As the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song goes “Teach your children well.” And I think our children and their beautiful, complex, rapidly developing minds deserve something better. Something different. Something real. Let’s work together to give them that. I think their tender hearts and souls wouldn’t mind the change either.