What is beauty?
A friend recently posted the well known Dove Evolution video on her facebook page which brought up the discussion of beauty and young girls. While I had seen this video before it didn't really impact me the way it did that day when I thought about my 10 1/2 year old daughter.
I have had to deal with comments from family and friends about the fact that Cerys doesn't watch any tv. I've been told that she'll have no idea of pop-culture and that I'm harming her by not showing her trendy and popular tv shows and movies. Or that she is just plum missing out.
What I didn't realize until this Dove Evolution discussion came about is that my daughter has a completely different idea of what beauty is. She has very limited exposure to typical beauty magazines because my house is filled with Martha, ReadyMade and Modernism. She's probably wondering why Martha never ages and in fact looks younger with each magazine though. Oh wait, no, that's what I keep thinking, not Cerys. She doesn't follow music trends as her favorite CD is the Mama Mia soundtrack which she tries to play on her cello from time to time. She knows of Hanna Montana but only because this girls face is on every shoe, backpack and t-shirt sold everywhere. Cerys thinks it's silly that her face is plastered on everything and doesn't quite get it.
Yesterday I did a marketing survey where they wanted my daughter's opinion about toys. We had to answer questions about American Girls, Barbie and Hanna Montana. One of the questions for Barbie and Hanna where whether they were girls my daughter wanted to be herself or to be friends with. Both times Cerys laughed aloud, shook her head and said firmly "no."
I asked her this morning on our drive to school, "what are three things that mean beauty to you?" She took her time answering but eventually "Trees, Rocks and Wolves" were her answers.
I've written before about raising a Thrifted kid but I can even go deeper by what it's like to raise a media free & thrifted kid. Her perception of the world is one that she has created by what she sees. She hasn't been influenced by marketing companies (well a little bit of American Girl but it was the stories that she first fell in love with) or by the trends of her school friends.
The only thing that I've ever seen her become interested in because of school are SillyBandz. And as someone who coveted those bracelets worn by Madonna in the 80's I can only support this enthusiastically. Cerys doesn't really collect anything normal. Her room is filled with vintage furs, bones, books and antlers.
The beauty a media free child sees are the people around her. Or the kindness that one shows to them. Last weekend I was being silly and quacked like a duck startling the woman in front of us. She turned around wondering what it was. I laughed and told her I was just making a duck sound. When she looked at Cerys in her hat and braids and her mix matched clothing of plaids, polka dots and leg warmers, she told her that she looked beautiful. Then she thanked me for making a sound that would cause her to turn around to notice my daughter. Which of course warmed both Cerys and I to the core.
I'm not trying to preach and tell everyone to stop watching tv or to take away those little hand held video game thingies. I want to share with you that there are real positive sides to being media free that I didn't even realize until last week. We go media free because our school supports this and encourages it. Because I want my children's imagination to be as incredible as it can on it's own accord. Because I want the children to get lost in books and hopefully have a better attention span than I did. Or because I don't want them to see violent act after violent act as even a simple cartoon can portray. I just didn't realize that they would view the world so differently.
My daughter has no sense of dress style. She dresses as a 5th grader to play, to do flips, to do the splits and to climb trees. I beg her to cut her bangs and she says no, that she is proud of being a tomboy with messy hair. Yet even in her strange combinations of clothing, she has confidence and pride. There is no certain way to dress. There are no trends to really follow in a Waldorf school except to be dressed to play and to play hard.
The biggest reason that I send my daughter to a Waldorf school is exactly all of that.
By 5th grade I was an outcast in my school. I felt ugly and it only got worse. One of my saddest and most heartfelt post was this one where I titled it Growing Up Ugly. My heart swells to think of my daughter so at peace in her world. She feels beautiful because she doesn't know any different. In her world beauty is the trees that she can climb, the rocks that she can admire (and probably throw) and the wolves that she one day dreams of riding. (she wants to be a wolf rider when she grows up)
I'll add that it's been tough raising media free kids. It's all around us and the pressure is enormous. We have to be conscious of it in restaurants, stores, airports and at friend's homes. We have to be strong when it would be so easy to just turn on the tv just to get the kids to be quiet for 20 minutes. We have to watch other kids with their heads in their phones, gaming machine (I really should know what these things are called-I think Nintendo makes them) and other electronics when we are out. Or observing the family of four sitting at restaurant being there together but all lost in their machines. Which reminds me a bit of this video. It's not easy to go against the flow of our culture. But I'll tell you personally it has been worth it.
I'd love to hear what your idea of beauty is?