beauty

Kids, Beauty Standards and What I Wish I Could Tell My 9-Year-Old Self

This story was originally featured in Youngish, our new beauty newsletter for women who aren't old, but aren't exactly young either. Sign up here for weekly updates.

--

I was nine (nine!) when one of my older cousins told me that I should be careful not to gain any more weight, as I was bordering on “too curvy.” I took her advice to heart and for the next two decades, I worried about my weight constantly. In the sixth grade, I jumped rope 1,000 times a day because I heard a celebrity credit it for her weight loss. Ditto for Britney Spears’ infamous ab workout two years later. (She reportedly did up to 1,000 crunches daily during her “Slave 4 U” era.) It wasn’t until my early 30s (after a health scare, a marathon and a lot of deep conversations with my mother) that I actually started appreciating my body for what it did for me, rather than the way it looked.

Looking back, I feel sad thinking about my childhood and tween relationship with beauty standards. This awareness starts so early, which is why my best friend, who has two stepdaughters in middle school, is careful about the ways she talks to them. Even seemingly positive comments like, “You look so pretty,” can imprint value judgements that stick. My editor, who has a six-year-old daughter, agrees. “It’s so hard to navigate young girls’ relationships with their looks. On the one hand, you never want to tie beauty to their self-worth. On the other, no matter how many coding classes you sign them up for, there comes an age (at least in my experience) when many just start caring about it. My daughter is obsessed with a play lipstick tube she got in a goodie bag. Am I supposed to ban her from playing with it? No, seriously, I’m asking.”

As a beauty editor, I often wonder (and worry) about my role in this. When I write about “makeup tips for covering up a breakout,” am I upholding the fallacy that acne is something that should be hidden? Or when I’ve casually talked about the merits of facial massage for “sculpting your cheekbones,” am I teaching girls that having a fuller face is undesirable? Recently, I got a PR pitch that read: “Say Goodbye to Your Baby Face with This Celebrity Procedure.” It was one of dozens of emails in my inbox touting the benefits of buccal fat removal.

This cavalier language is rampant, and after writing about beauty for the last decade, I have become ever more wary about perpetuating it. That’s why I’ve made a commitment to stop using words like “anti-aging,” or “flawless,” and related phrases like “covers imperfections,” which isn’t easy in my industry (and quite frankly, slows down my writing), but I think it’s important. On that note, if you ever catch me slip up on this, you have my full permission to kindly flag it to my attention.

In other words, though I can’t go back in time and tell my nine-year-old self that she’s not fat, and that she’s rocking the hell out of that bowl cut with her outfit-coordinated headbands, I can use language I’m proud of in my stories and around the younger kids in my orbit.

Want the next issue sent right to your inbox? Subscribe here.

Feel-Good Beauty Products For Any Age

About Face Matte Fluid Eye Paint

16
Buy It

Tower28 JuiceBalm Tinted Lip Balm

16
Buy It

The Créme Shop BT21 Acne Patches

8
Buy It

Jenny Jin

Beauty Director

Jenny Jin is PureWow’s Beauty Director and is currently based in Los Angeles. Since beginning her journalism career at Real Simple magazine, she has become a human encyclopedia of...
read full bio

Why You Should Trust Us

PureWow's editors and writers have spent more than a decade shopping online, digging through sales and putting our home goods, beauty finds, wellness picks and more through the wringer—all to help you determine which are actually worth your hard-earned cash. From our PureWow100 series (where we rank items on a 100-point scale) to our painstakingly curated lists of fashion, beauty, cooking, home and family picks, you can trust that our recommendations have been thoroughly vetted for function, aesthetics and innovation. Whether you're looking for travel-size hair dryers you can take on-the-go or women’s walking shoes that won’t hurt your feet, we’ve got you covered.