For the sake of girls and women everywhere, here’s an appeal: stop using “you’re beautiful” as a catch-all compliment. Beauty isn’t anything more than luck or random chance. It’s not an achievement or a virtue, just a fact. When I was in elementary school, we used to have a star student of the week, and we’d all write something about the student that we liked. My teacher had one rule: you couldn’t write anything about someone’s appearance. The compliment had to be a genuine one, one that went more than just skin deep.
Does this mean you should never tell women or girls that they look beautiful? No: of course you can. People like to be told that they look nice.
All it means is that isn’t the only compliment you should pay to women. When all you tell someone is, “Wow, you look great!” you send a very clear message. And that message is, “Your looks are what matter.” Think about how so many of us talk to little girls. They are little princesses, they are beautiful and pretty. We want them to twirl around in their cute dresses. There is nothing wrong with that, unless those are the only compliments they'll ever hear. If, to the exclusion of all else, we tell them that they’re pretty princesses, we send them a subliminal message from the time they’re old enough to understand anything: that, as a female, the expectation is for them to look good. And not much else.
And the problem is, this message is absorbed by everyone around the “pretty princess.” The boys in her life -- friends, classmates, brothers -- are told that they’re big, strong boys who can do anything. Contrast that with the demand for the princess to “give the grownups a twirl” and you can see why it would be so easy for boys to assume that they must be better, stronger, smarter. And then, in later years when one of these pretty princesses might express an opinion he doesn’t agree with, she’s just emotional. Or she’s just an angry feminist.
Sure: tell girls that they are beautiful. As long as they hear an equal amount of compliments or comments that tell them: you are kind: you are a good friend: you are a thoughtful and deep-thinking person. Tell little girls that they always come up with such interesting questions to ask, that they take good care of their siblings or their pets or their friends, that they are so helpful to people, that they get along well with others, that they are brave and tough and capable.
Give girls the message that they’re important as a whole, complete person. One who thinks and feels and has opinions and ideas: not just a pretty face.
