Brave Parents Conversations #002: Can I dress up and talk about fashion with my daughter and compliment her without harming her body image?

Brave Parents Conversations #002: My daughter and I love fashion, dressing up and complimenting each other. Am I doing the wrong thing by complimenting on our looks?

Transcript
I reckon this is absolutely brilliant. Fantastic.

I absolutely agree. We love watching Project Runway

Tim Gunn.

We watch that with our girls and we talked about,

you know, the construction of the clothes and that's amazing.

This is Art

and we should be encouraging our girls, if they have an interest in that, to really appreciate it.

And I love the fact that you frame it in terms of expression

and fun because I think that is what it should be.

That's right. Think of it

as art. The body is the canvas and you and your daughter are doing a creative pursuit together.

I think that's wonderful. And the same applies with makeup.

We get this question a lot from parents who are unsure about,

you know, are they damaging their daughter

when they wear makeup or when they'll allow their daughter to wear makeup or whatever.

I'm wearing lipstick. We talked to our girls about makeup.

It's like face paint face paint, you know,

I do it because it's fun and it's a creative expression,

and we don't frame clothing or makeup.

as something women have to do to hide our flaws to make us acceptable for someone else.

We do it as a fun creative expression for ourselves.