Pretty

She stands in front of me, hands clasped behind her back, dressed in a ladybug costume, complete with wings.

"I picked out my clothes by myself," she says. "Do I look pretty?"

I gaze at her, suddenly a little breathless with the weight of gravity against my skin, against my heart.

Pretty? No.

She is remarkable. From the tip of her turned-up nose to the toes of her red boots. She has blue eyes, arched brows, a wide mouth with a perfect tear-shaped hollow above her upper lip. Her chin is slightly cleft, a feature she inherited from her daddy, and she possesses the tiniest square shoulders. A wispy girl, made of light and energy, just waiting to be released.

Her name has two meanings: Fairy Child, and One Planted With Strength.

The first meaning seems specifically accurate in this moment, the second prophetic.

Pretty? No. Pretty doesn’t do her justice. It never could.

"You look magnificent," I say, cupping her face in my hands and kissing her on the nose. "But not just here—" I draw a circle around her face with my finger. "Here too." I press my hand over her heart. "And you are smart, and brave, and kind, and fierce, and strong, and exactly the person you are meant to be. And I am so grateful to be your mommy." She smiles, grinning wide and totally confident I am telling her the truth. And off she skips. Certain I know what I'm talking about.

But I want to call her back. I want to tell her she doesn't have to be.

She is remarkable.

She is magnificent.

She is beautiful in all the ways.

But, she doesn't have to be.

Being a girl doesn't automatically mandate she occupy a space labeled ‘pretty,’ thereby justifying her existence to the world.

I glance in the bathroom mirror and close my eyes.

Hypocrite.

Because even though I wrap words around these things for myself and my daughter and convince us both of their truth, I am still standing here applying mascara.

"Why are you putting that stuff on your eyes, Mommy?"

Why indeed?

Because I like to highlight what I already like about myself . . . Because I like dressing up . . . Because sometimes I want to wear a mask . . . Because sometimes I am caught in a cycle of belief and unbelief about my own existence in the world . . .

And what about later?

"What are calories, Mommy?"

"Am I the right size, Mommy?"

"How much do I weigh, Mommy?"

"Am I too tall, Mommy?"

"Mommy, Am I pretty?"

I didn't know, when I asked my own mother those questions, how much they must have hurt. How much she must have longed to wrap me up and seal out the world. How much she must have wanted to whisper "Yes" and only "Yes," over and over until I heard nothing else.

But the world is loud.

Perhaps she did whisper "Yes" to me.

Somehow, her words got a little lost.

And as I think about this now, and prepare my own Yes for my daughter, I wrestle with what I want to say. With how I want to say it. And not only then—when she asks—but every day until then as she watches me answer this question for myself.

"You are pretty" I will tell her in a million different ways. It's a given. The sun shines. Water is wet. The night is dark. You are pretty. But more than that, I want her to know that she doesn't have to be. It's not her job.

She can be smart, and brave, and kind, and thoughtful, and giving, and honest, and funny, and sad. She can be angry and dirty, lost, lonely, curious, excited, and introspective. She can be outgoing or shy. Fierce or quiet. Afraid or nervous. Uncertain, eager, tired, giddy. All of them. None of them. A million combinations of a these and a million others, and she will be worth infinitely more than all of them.

She is enough. Exactly as she is, within every moment she breathes, and then some.

So am I.

And so are you.

If you should find yourself in her company, or in the company of any small human—Planted With Strength (as every child is, given half a chance)—would you do me a favor? Would you reassure them? Would you tell that small one "Yes?" But that they don't have to be? And then, would you help me find new words? Something besides pretty, or beautiful, or handsome? Because the names we hear spoken over us, are most often the names we learn to reach for. They become the names and words we adopt as definitions, wrapping them around ourselves, and shrinking or expanding, to fit.

Let's find better words. Bigger, braver, stronger, more lovely words. And when the questions arrive, by the time our tiny humans are asking them, perhaps they will have heard better answers often enough to believe them. And so will we.