Self-esteem issues - girls and looks and stuff

[Quattrocento]

My daughter (12) is beautiful. Really she is. She is tall, lovely skin that tans easily, hourglass figure, beautiful big brown eyes, lashes and brows to match, neat little mouth and ears, heart shaped face. In all honesty she looks like a model.

So why have I just had hours of tears of her telling me that she really believes she is ugly. Despite my never ever having lied to her (well apart from the tooth fairy and santa) she thinks that I am lying to her because Mums need to think that their children are beautiful. She thinks our friends are lying to her as well in one form of gigantic adult conspiracy.

We've done the whole thing about beauty being only skin deep, which it clearly is, but what worries me so much is that she genuinely believes she is a candidate for one of cinderella's ugly sisters. This lack of honest self-appraisal and a fundamental lack of any form of arrogance is endearing but dangerous. She could end up making really poor choices through this, throughout her life.

I'll probably regret posting this, but I'm genuinely worried about her lack of self esteem. So what do I do?

DD1 was like this and I don't think there is a magic solution. I just kept up the positive talk and she grew into herself in the end. She's 19 now and thinks she looks "quite good" now which I suppose is progress. She is convinced she went through an ugly stage as a young teenager but if she did it certainly passed me by.

Is your DD self conscious about being tall? DD1 is small and she focused on that she was a bit different from her friends for a long time.

DD2 didn't seem to have the same self esteem problems but she was very heavily involved in her dancing at that age (lots and lots of times a week) and that certainly took the focus off her appearance.

I don't have old enough children to have any advice from the parent's point of view but it's funny how one can look back at photos of oneself as a teenager and think 'OMG I was so pretty - why didn't I realise?!'

maybe teenagers need to be equipped with the tools to feel good about themselves regardless of their level of beauty; it must be so hard living in a society where so much focus is put on appearance for girls, even more than when we were younger; it is probably this rather than exactly where she would rate herself from 1 to 10 that matters. I mean, she isn't about to enter a beauty contest so at some level it doesn't matter where she is on the scale. Of course the utter wrongness of her assessment is bothering you but perhaps her thinking it matters is more important than her thinking she isn't pretty. Does that make any sense?

I think feminism has a lot of the solutions but then I would think that....

Am on my phone now so can't post much. Will look again in the morning, but wanted to say that dove website I'm sure has some good things for self esteem in young women. phone won't let me see it but it might be worth a look.

Sorry your dd is feeling so crappy about herself.

Thank you all

This struck a particular chord

"Of course the utter wrongness of her assessment is bothering you but perhaps her thinking it matters is more important than her thinking she isn't pretty. Does that make any sense?"

Yes that's what I meant. There are two issues here - the first is that beauty truly is only skin deep and why is this important, and the second is the dysmorphia thing (do I mean dysmorphia?) where she is utterly incapable of looking at herself and seeing what other people see

here is the dove campaign for real beauty.

hth

Meet her half-way?

Don't counteract with you are beautiful as it implies her feelings are wrong and inaccurate.

Ask well who do you think is beautiful and see where these misconceptions arise.

Then start to work on overturning these misconceptions.