My child will not be contained in the 6 letter word -PRETTY
O what a cute baby, so pretty! So
fair, so beautiful!
Yes babies are cute and we all adore them but as they grow up into
little girls and boys, can we look beyond their being just a pretty face? Or is
it too difficult?
I read this on a website
and it's so profound that I made a resolve that I will never use the word
pretty as is- ever for my child or that matter any other child.
I quote "the word ‘pretty’ is unworthy of everything you will
be and no child of mine will be contained in 6 letters. You will be pretty
intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing but you will never be
merely pretty". This awesome quote is by Kate Makkai, a poet.
Wow is the word! I have always believed that young minds are very
vulnerable and what you teach them at this age is something their tender minds
will grasp and etch it in their memory and this will be very difficult to shake
off. The unrealistic beauty standards these days, defining beauty in terms of
fair skin, tall and petite, big eyes-no glasses of course, silky straight hair,
perfect set of shining white teeth and the list goes on and on. TV and Internet
are already doing enough damage by feeding this to our kids.
Remember Jassi in the popular soap on Sony- Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahi,
though we had an unconventional heroine which took the show
and the protagonist places, finally it spilled cold water and
went back to the same old and disappointing path of the plain Jane
transforming into a ravishing chick and the hero falls in love
with her new look, I had stopped watching the show after
this spoiler as it was such a dampener.
Our fairy tales are not far
behind here. The beautiful princess, handsome prince, evil black witch- well
who had defined these? The witch need not always be ugly and black. Why not a
plump, bespectacled and dusky heroine for a change? Time to re
write the age old fairy tales and teach our kids something more realistic.
Good old Barbie who every young girl swoons over (I did it too), I
was glad to hear that Mantel (the company that produces Barbie) has come out
with 3 new variants which are more realistic- the names that they have given
again seem weird and unrealistic but they are in essence the not so thin
Barbie, the dusky and tall. Well the #TheDollEvolves.
Looking at kids only terms of
their outer appearance and using that criteria to judge them or make a first
impression for that matter is really unfair. What happened to intelligence,
compassion, boldness, creative thinking, daring to be different and so much more?
Aren't these more relevant qualities and something we should focus on? Only
pretty without any prefix renders the word useless. And by inadvertently
feeding this to a child - O you are a pretty face, you will have it easy, we
are doing more harm. The child will gradually develop a superiority complex and
may become complacent in other aspects, after all- am I not pretty? Why do I
need to work hard? This is definitely not what we want to get our
kids into.
I ask who has defined what is pretty?
This definition itself is flawed. So are we implying those
who don't fit into the checklist of pretty are doomed and will only
get it the hard way.
So
dear fellow parents and those who are not yet there - the next time
you meet a little girl let her know that she is much beyond her physical
appearance. Let her discover her strengths, overcome her fears, face the
hurdles and excel, and for that she needs to be taught that she is much than
being pretty. She is pretty awesome, I would say.
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