Blog #9
November 5, 2009
Growing up, my mother always stressed the importance of acting like lady. She made rules about what I was allowed to do and at what age, like I wasn’t allowed to shave my legs until I turned fourteen or wear make up until I was sixteen. But when I finally was able to do these things, it made me feel like I was turning into a woman. In today’s society, girls are growing up so much faster than they did in the eighties, when I was growing up. I think of the toddler pageants I run across on television where the little girls who can’t be more than four or five years old are wearing tons of make up, complicated hairstyles and provacative grown up clothing. The pressure these girls have to be beautiful, sexy winners while being a child is disgusting to me. We can blame the media all we want about the way little girls want to dress today but when parents put their children through the pressure of a pageant that forces them to grow up becoming superficial and vain, I think that is where the real problem lies. My mother always instilled in me the values of natural beauty, even when I was allowed to wear make up she stressed the fact that I didn’t really need it. Those words stick with me today. To those who really know me and want to know me, they can see the real me daily because I do not wear a mask of what society wants me to believe is beautiful. Internal and external confidence in who you are is truly sexy!
