Questions about taboos

Remembering that "What's wrong with tattoos anyway?" is just a question, not an indication that inked sleeves are in your daughter's immediate future, I think the first answer might be a practical one. Getting a tattoo or a lot of piercings puts a person at risk for infection or Hep C, for instance. The next answer might be interpersonal. Right or wrong, a person with major body art or so many rings on her ear it looks like a Slinky presents a particular first impression that puts some people off, especially teachers, and, later, possible employers, not to mention store owners, police, and other people's parents. That's a choice folks make when they go for the big-time tats, and it's a permanent one. The most important answer could be a discussion not of why not to get a tattoo, navel piercing, Ronald McDonald dye job, but why do get one. Together you could actually ask some people who've gone that route, or want to, and compile a list. It will probably include: I want to be different.

It's my body and I have a right to do whatever I please with it.

It's my way of expressing how sick I am of everybody telling me who to be.

I like to weird people out, especially adults who control me.

If people really want to know the real me, they have to get past the way I look. If they judge me by my appearance, I don't want to know them.

I want people to notice me.

The potential for using that information in a discussion with your daughter is huge. It can lead to all kinds of mutually drawn conclusions about who her body really belongs to, what genuine uniqueness is, and how to work out issues in healthy ways instead of rebellious ones. You'll make the decision on whether there will be piercings and tattooings and dying-hair-purple on your watch, but you don't have to lay down the law like a drill sergeant right now. After all, she's just asking.

Basic beauty care

No matter where your daughter is hanging out on that bridge we've been talking about, someplace in the tween years it's time to instill some fundamental grooming habits. You've obviously emphasized hair brushing, frequent bathing, and clean clothes since she was a little bitty thing, and have probably had more luck with that in her case than with any sons you've been blessed with. Now that her body is changing-which we'll talk more about in the next section-new self-care tasks are becoming necessary. But teaching them to your tween doesn't have to become one more thing you have to nag her about. Again, skin care and nail filing may have become annoyances you have to squeeze in among the other thousand things you have to do, but they're new and potentially very cool to your daughter. Why not make it fun for her with a Beauty Chart?

On the blog, we entitled ours "Lookin' Good!" Yet again, details can be found in The Skin You're In (pp. 74-76). I include these categories down the left side of the chart, but you can tailor yours to your daughter's own needs and inclinations. These are the basics, but if you have a princess, she might want to add more primping tasks. The ones with *s, for instance, are optional. You may be surprised by my inclusion of moisturizers at this age, but with the sun's rays becoming more damaging and more toxins appearing in our air, protective skin care can't start too soon, not just for the sake of beauty but for health too.

Three things will allow this to work until she gets into a natural routine: Let her decorate her chart however she wants, including stickers, stars, or cool pens to check things off.

Come up with the beauty basics together, rather than presenting her with a list. You'll obviously be making the suggestions and indicating which aren't optional, but you'll be surprised at what she actually wants to do. She'll feel grown up in the appropriate way, as opposed to making off with your eye shadow.

Start with the very basics and add things gradually.

I always tell the tweens that if they want to be more private, they can make a small chart in a notebook rather than something on poster board to hang on the wall. The more age-appropriate choices she has, the better.

Have fun with beauty

Again, if you're not having at least a little bit of fun with all of this, you're both missing out on making some memories that are sure to come up years from now when the two of you are cleaning up after a Thanksgiving dinner. A couple of suggestions might get you started.

Have a spa night. This is detailed in The Skin You're In too (pp. 35-36). Basically, the two of you-and her BFF and her mom too, if that works-will gather the beauty supplies in a space where you won't be interrupted by teasing brothers, curious fathers, etc. (Which may mean sending them out of the house completely. Or threatening them.) Candles, flowers, pretty towels, and fave music can set the scene. Give yourselves head-to-toe spa care (your own usual practices or those outlined in The Skin You're In). Follow up with a snack feast and, hopefully, the next step- Take a girly shopping trip, even if you carve out fifteen minutes to go down the cosmetics and toiletries aisle in the grocery store without an entourage of brothers. It doesn't have to be a department store cosmetic counter or The Body Shop at this stage, unless you want to splurge (in which case, can I come along?). Pick out moisturizer, shampoo, body wash, nail polish (if that's her thing) that will be hers alone. If finances necessitate everybody using from the same source at your house (I know! That stuff is expensive!), get some travel-size containers and let her fill hers from there. She can keep them in a cosmetic bag or a special spot on a shelf in the bathroom closet. Anything that makes taking care of herself special. It's important, even if she isn't a girly girl.

Bridging the Gap

Almighty God, creator of all beauty and lover of all: I bless you for 's perfection that takes this mother's breath away.

While I pass her body from my care to hers, please bridge the gap between the joy she needs to experience in emerging into her own womanly beauty and what I have within myself to show her that joy. In the name of your beloved Son, I pray.

Amen.

6.

"But You're Beautiful on the Inside..."

Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in.

1 Peter 3:4 "Sure, my mom's told me to look my best and stay clean and presentable, but she is always saying that people will think you're beautiful by the way you live, not by how much makeup you slather on."

age 12 Ialways tell tween girls they're my favorite brand of kid. Part of that is because they're so naturally precious-no matter how they're dressed or what state of neatness their ponytails are in. I've been to upper-middle-class suburbs where the ten-year-olds had highlighted hair and outfits more expensive than the one I was wearing. I've also been to rural boroughs with names like Possum Town where the girls had never seen the inside of a beauty shop, and hand-me-downs were worn as proudly as anything with a GapKids label. With their shining eyes and ready smiles and glowing skin, every one of them has been absolutely adorable.

Well, almost every one. There was the morning I walked into what was to be an all-day Girlz Only workshop where the room was set up so that one line of girls was seated directly facing the other line of girls. It took me about five seconds to see that there was no love lost between Group A-the chubbier, less coiffed, Kmart shoppers-and Group B-who seemed to have come directly from the Galleria, the nail salon, or the personal trainer. Group B was delivering disdainful, curled-lip looks to Group A, which was retaliating with bitter, slit-eyed glares that only barely covered their collective shame.

It was the ugliest group of young girls I'd ever seen. Bless their hearts.

I did bless their hearts, because neither group was picking up its respective attitude from, as my mother would have said, "anybody strange." The moms who had gathered in the chairs in the back of the room had also separated themselves into two well-defined groups, and while their contempt for each other was a bit more subtle than what was going on between their daughters, nobody was doing anything to stop the obvious exchange of hatred. I found that even more unattractive.

My job that day was to teach the girls and their moms about inner beauty. I definitely had my work cut out for me. It looked like everybody in that room was going to need a total makeover.

I did not, however, announce that developing inner beauty was what we were going to talk about in our workshop. Here's why: For Group A, that would sound like a consolation prize. What they would hear through the filter already in place at age ten was, "You're nothing to look at, but you can always develop a nice personality and people might still like you." In their minds, being told they could have inner beauty would be like trying out for a role in a play and being given a job as an usher.

For Group B, it would be evidence that here was another adult who didn't know what she was talking about. In the first place, they knew very well there were no outwardly homely/inwardly beautiful girls in the Ruling Class. In the second place, "everybody" knows that inner beauty is what not-pretty girls and their mothers talk about to very pretty girls because they're jealous of their fabulous good looks.

Because we were in a church setting-yeah, that makes it even more disturbing, doesn't it?-both groups had been exposed to the misguided theology that outward appearance doesn't count at all (as we discussed previously). But that, they'd experienced firsthand, wasn't true. They all would have given me looks that said, "Lady, get away from me with that dog food."

We made some progress that day-especially after I rearranged the chairs into a circle so it would look less like they were mobilizing for Iwo Jima. But since then I have done some deep study into the "problem" of inner beauty, and I'm happy to share my conclusions with you. As always, read for interest, and take away what might be helpful to you with your own mini-woman.

Getting Clear: On Inner Beauty

I have discovered that the way inner beauty is talked about with girls has a profound effect on them.

The tween who knows she's not considered as cute as the other girls-and trust me, at some point she figures that out, or is informed of it outright by some RMG-is often told that it doesn't matter what she looks like, that she just needs to develop "character." At the same time, often nobody is helping her to be anything but unlovely on the outside, as if she's basically a lost beauty cause already. That approach doesn't build character; rather, it makes her angry, bitter, and ashamed, and fills her with self-loathing. That, in turn, makes her even less attractive.

Without any real, concrete guidance on exactly what "inner beauty" means, she's likely to draw the conclusion that since outer beauty doesn't matter and inner beauty does, then inner beauty must be the opposite of outer beauty. So therefore-in tween logic-girls who are pretty on the outside must be mean, snobby, and fake on the inside.

All those tween girls who are already drop-dead gorgeous are not, of course, mean-spirited, stuck-up, and synthetic. Unfortunately, though, some have been told since birth how perfect they are, with very little emphasis on anything else. It was easy to let them get away with whatever they wanted when they were little because they were such precious little dolls that even their crying was cute. (Daddies and grandfathers are often the perpetrators of that crime.) It's not quite as adorable when they hit their tweens, but by then much of the damage has been done, and holding them accountable now is like trying to restrain a wet Siamese cat. Easier to just let it go. Either that or Daddy simply says, with pride, "She's a pistol. I pity the poor guy she marries." Again, please know that I am not saying every exquisitely beautiful girl-child is a spoiled brat. They're just the most likely to be indulged, which can leave them thinking, "Why should I try to be all sweet and kind when I'm going to get what I want no matter how I act?"

The majority of tween girls actually fall somewhere in between. They aren't the ones who are easy targets for teasers nor are they preteen model material. Each one of them has her own special brand of pretty, but she either doesn't know it or it doesn't matter to her yet. She has friends who, as the tween so often puts it, "love me for who I am." She's healthy, happy, and on her way to blossoming into a beautiful woman someday. The term "inner beauty" isn't loaded for her. She probably thinks she already has her some of that (as we say in the South), and she probably does. But she's not totally safe from the dangers of her culture.

In the first place, she's aware of the in-crowd. She knows it isn't inner beauty that gets you in there. She doesn't need that group. But-if someone from the inside suddenly takes an interest in her, she's going to have to be pretty strong to resist the lure of ultimate belonging. The in-crowd isn't always like the movie stereotype, but entrance usually involves renouncing something from her old life and leaving it behind-i.e., the BFFs who loved her for who she was. Excuse me? Inner what?

Besides, unlike her peers in Group A and Group B, she doesn't discount inner beauty completely. But if she's told that it's the only thing that counts, that outward appearance doesn't amount to a hill of beans in God's eyes, she feels conflicted, even guilty, because she wants to be cute. Invariably when I ask a group of tweens to look in the mirror and tell what they like in their reflection, more than one will raise her hand to ask, "Isn't it, like, stuck up to think you're pretty?" The visual knockouts rarely ask that because even if it does mean you're stuck up, they don't think there's anything wrong with that. The girls who consider themselves ugly don't ask that because they don't think they're going to see anything attractive in that mirror.

All of this would be sad if they weren't so primed for change in their tweens. It's the perfect time to teach them four things that I consider to be vital to their happiness and their ability to serve God's world.

First, appearance does matter, but it's inner beauty that makes a woman beautiful on the outside. It isn't one or the other. It's always both, and every girl can have both. She was made to have both, and both are open to all, no matter what assets they were born with.

She also needs to know that developing inner beauty isn't an arduous, uphill battle that's only achieved through the sacrifice of everything delightful and exciting about being a girl. Getting there is, in fact, half the fun.

Possessing inner beauty-God's beauty-is the only guarantee that she will be truly, deep-down happy. Continuing to become more inwardly beautiful is the only assurance that she'll be able to make a difference in the world-and that is what her generation is all about. That is her true in-crowd.

From the Ultimate Parent

Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable-if anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things...put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Philippians 4:8-9 NIV Tweens of either gender don't respond well to abstractions. It's practically suicidal for a teacher to tell her students to "behave" and expect them to do it. They need a clear explanation that "behave" means stay in your seat, don't talk without raising your hand, don't put boogers on the kid next to you. Without it, they'll take over the classroom.

God knows (I mean that literally) tween girls need to have the abstract concept of "inner beauty" spelled out in concrete terms. If we're going to help instill such beauty in our daughters, we as mothers need a clear definition too. Given the popularity of the word whatever among tween girls, I'm delighted that Paul's letter to the Philippians is the Bible passage which draws the most complete picture of what we're talking about when we say "inner beauty."

"Whatever is true." No lies, fibs, creative manipulations of what really went down with her sister while you were out of the room. Beyond that-how to seek God's truth in such things as friend situations and conflicts on the soccer team.

"Whatever is noble." When to give up her turn, handle the insult without insulting back, volunteer to do the hard part. Beyond that-discerning when noble is noble and when it's just a way to make the right impression.

"Whatever is right." Even if it means being labeled a snitch, a traitor, or a goody-goody. Beyond that-avoiding becoming insufferably judgmental.

"Whatever is pure." Eschewing the crude movies, the disgusting song lyrics, the way-more-than-suggestive videos. Beyond that-filling the inner space with inspiring film, soul-moving music, heart-to-heart conversation.

"Whatever is lovely." In words that stir up love instead of hate, open lunch tables instead of closed doors, high hopes instead of low expectations. Beyond that-finding the lovely in everyone.

"Whatever is admirable." Inviting the "different" girl, volunteering on Saturday, giving her birthday money for her sister's mission trip. Beyond that-making sure the motivation is more than "to be admired."

"If anything is excellent or praiseworthy-think about such things." Doing her best in school. Giving her all for the team. Being a good citizen even when nobody's looking. Beyond that-doing it for love and not for praise.

It's a tall order for anyone, much less a nine-year-old. But we can reassure our mini-women they're not in this alone. Undergirding all the "whatevers" is the heart of the passage: "The God of peace will be with you." If we constantly assure them of that, share the disciplines that connect them with God, and show them the fruits in our own lives, the "whatever" becomes what is.

Yeah, I love that.

Test Your Own Waters

Relax. I'm not going to ask you to assess how you measure up to all of the above. Are you kidding? I'd have a panic attack if somebody asked me to do that. I don't even think God asks us to do that.

What I do think is that it's important for each of us to spot-check our basic attitude on a regular basis. We can talk to our daughters until their eyes glaze over-and the longer we talk the more likely that is-but what they really "hear" is the 'tude that shapes our behavior. It's worth some examination before we move forward.

Using your usual approach-or trying something different this time-look at it this way: How do you respond to very beautiful women (even though, according to what we've said here, you yourself are one)? What goes through your mind? Does being around them affect your confidence at all? Change your behavior? Alter your mood? Threaten your religion? (JK!) How do you respond to women who are what our older Southern ladies call "ill favored"? Ask yourself the same questions as in #1.

When you were a tween, did you fall into Group A, Group B, or somewhere in between? Did that have any lasting effect on your belief in the importance of inner beauty? Has it affected how you're raising your daughter?

If you have trouble getting a handle on this, just listen to yourself when you're talking to your girlfriends. Your answers will be there. At least, that's where I often find mine.