here<\/a>. \u00a0In it, author Lisa Bloom explains the value of praising young girls for things other than their appearance. \u00a0She says that finding other things to compliment will help them to combat the societal expectation that their appearance is the most important thing. \u00a0The article also serves essentially as a promotion for the book she has written on this topic.<\/p>\nAs a father to two young girls, I celebrate that these values are being upheld. \u00a0I want my girls to grow up knowing that their worth is not exclusively determined by how attractive society deems them to be. \u00a0Already I see the creativity and enthusiasm my four year-old is demonstrating and I am glad that I am not the only one who compliments her for that.<\/p>\n
To make her point though, Bloom gives an example of a dinner party that she attended where she met her friend’s 5 year-old daughter. \u00a0She explains that she is so committed to these ideals that she held back her compliments on the girls appearance. \u00a0I applaud her for the way she spoke to the girl at her level (which isn’t always easy or appreciated) and for being able to find common interests. \u00a0I refuse, however, to congratulate her for not complimenting the young girl’s appearance.<\/p>\n
First, especially in this particular incident, it was a completely natural thing to do. \u00a0She admitted to noticing and appreciating how cute the young girl looked. \u00a0The girl almost certainly would have appreciated the compliment (I say ‘almost certainly’ because my oldest daughter seems bothered by people telling her she’s ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’). \u00a0Any time we give someone a compliment and they are happy to hear, that also makes us feel better too. \u00a0Those are all real results. \u00a0The long term benefits of not complimenting are entirely theoretical and may very well be cancelled out by other forces down the road, which leads me to my next point.<\/p>\n
At various times in my daughters’ lives, they will be convinced that they are not pretty. \u00a0That will happen despite what I teach as a pastor, what Bloom and others write in books about how to raise girls and what we as her parents tell her. \u00a0I see it then as my responsibility to make sure that no matter what she assumes about what the boys at school think or anyone else she will know that her father sees her as beautiful. \u00a0If either of my daughters grows up not knowing that their father think they are beautiful, then I will have failed in that parental responsibility.<\/p>\n
Finally, holding back from complimenting a girl about her appearance doesn’t mean you have arrived as a feminist or that you have reached the pinnacle of female understanding, it means you have experienced what men live with every day. \u00a0If we are supposed to congratulate Ms. Bloom for holding back a compliment about a girl’s looks, we should go around thanking every man we meet. \u00a0My mind conjures up all kinds of compliments about the women I see, and I usually do a pretty good job of filtering out the inappropriate ones. \u00a0That doesn’t make me a hero, that’s just what men do.<\/p>\n
I agree that we should compliment little girls and little boys on their character, on their achievements, on the skills they’ve developed and all sorts of other things, but I also believe that it would have been quite appropriate for a woman in Ms. Bloom’s position to speak the kind words on her mind and make a little girl, if only superficially and only for a moment, happy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An article showed up on my Facebook feed a few times a long time ago. \u00a0I had a reaction to it at the time, but I figured it would fade away, which it mostly did. \u00a0Now I’ve seen the article posted again a few more times and I thought it would be worth spelling out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-parenting","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":234,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions\/234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thirdway.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}