Beauty Sick

when your little girl
asks you if she’s pretty
your heart will drop like a wineglass
on the hardwood floor
part of you will want to say
of course you are, don’t ever question it
and the other part
the part that is clawing at
you
will want to grab her by her shoulders
look straight into the wells of
her eyes until they echo back to you
and say
you do not have to be if you don’t want to
it is not your job

If you feel short of time and money, but still spend plenty of both trying to push yourself closer to our culture’s beauty ideal, you can blame beauty sickness.

Those who shame women for their appearance feed beauty sickness. Those who praise girls and women only for how they look do the same.

So many young women today are strikingly bold in important areas of their lives, but still crumble in front of the mirror

take on the world

Women’s struggles to feel comfortable in their own bodies should not be treated as simply a fact of life.

normative discontent to describe this phenomenon.1 The term suggests that we’ve gotten to a place where it’s considered normal for girls or women to be deeply disappointed when they look in the mirror. It’s the girl version of “boys will be boys.”

We accept this type of unhappiness as part of being a woman.

The more Gabrielle tried to follow the path set for women, the worse she felt.

She wanted desperately to have a daughter who didn’t worry about how she looked, and the only way she knew how to do that was to try to make Gabrielle more of a boy and less of a girl.