The lesson of Margot Robbie and body confidence

The trolling Margot Robbie received about her beauty is a really clear example of how our current approach to building our girls’ body confidence is doing more harm than good.

Beauty is an external measure. It's something that someone else bestows on you and it's also something that other people get to take away from you.

If we want to raise our girls to like themselves ALL THE TIME we need to help them build their identity on internal measures that THEY control — things like character, their persistence, their bravery, their humour, and their kindness.

Transcript

I want to talk about Margot Robbie and the trolling she received about her beauty.

There is no clearer example of how our current approach to building our

girls’ body image is doing more harm than good.

So some bloke on the internet decided that Margot Robbie wasn't very hot.

He called her a “mid”.

If you're not up to date with the latest vocabulary of sexist garbage,

a “mid” means ordinary. If you rank a woman out of ten,

how lovely, a mid would be a four,

five, or a six, maybe a seven.

This comment led to a pile on of other men remarking on Margot Robbie's ordinariness.

There is so much wrong with this, I could go on for hours,

but I want talk specifically about the lesson we can learn in raising our girls.

What these judgments about Margot Robbie made perfectly clear

is that beauty is an external measure.

It's something that someone else bestows on you.

Someone else gets to decide if you are good enough,

and it's also something that other people get to take away from you,

like the trolls did to Margot Robbie.

What this shows is that it doesn't matter how beautiful your girl is.

Someone, sometime, is going to take beauty away from her.

They're going to tell her that she's a mid or worse.

Now, hopefully, Margot Robbie is riding

so high on her success right now that she's protected from these comments.

But most women and girls aren't so lucky.

Comments like this are inevitable. And for many women and girls,

they can be devastating.

The only way we can protect our girls from the people who will deem

them not beautiful enough is to raise our girls to not care.

Let me make that really clear.

Real body confidence is not about your girl being beautiful

or even believing that she is beautiful.

Real body confidence is not caring that much if she is or not.

It's building our girls’ identity

and self-worth on a firmer foundation than other people's judgments about their beauty.

And the first place to start is to stop talking about our girl's beauty.

Now, I'm not saying that you should never tell your daughter that she's beautiful.

But most girls receive more comments about their appearance than everything else combined,

which means they inevitably grow up believing that their beauty is the most important thing about them.

And then when someone inevitably takes beauty away,

they feel like they are worthless.

It is really hard if not impossible to like yourself.

if your identity and your self worth is based on relying on

other people to decide if you are beautiful.

Let your girls know that you think she is beautiful

but also tell them that you don't care. Of all the things that you love and value about your girl.

her beauty isn't even on the list.

And to do this, we need to dial down the beauty comments

and dial up the comments about the things that our girls can control.

Comments about their character, their persistence,

their bravery, their humour, and their kindness.