"Young people use beauty to express opinions they don’t have words for..."
Psychotherapist Fiona Yassin on how to talk to children about beauty culture in our appearance-obsessed world....
I interview a lot of experts when writing features, but often we only include a small quote in the actual piece. It always feels like such a shame to me, particularly when their advice is so good you want to share more of it.
I recently spoke to psychotherapist Fiona Yassin, founder and clinical director of The Wave Clinic for a feature for The Guardian. Her advice on parenting in an age of beauty obsession was so specific and helpful that I wanted to share the full transcript. If you’re a parent or care for children you’ll definitely want to read this. But if you don’t have kids, then reading it might help you reflect on how you were parented, and even allow you to ‘reparent’ your own inner child a bit.
All of this is super relevant right now as the beauty industry and social media have created a world where children to have an interest in beauty at a very young age; children as young as 10 are asking for anti-ageing products and the reports of children clamouring over skincare brand Drunk Elephant on social media and in stores has been astounding.
Do share this post with anyone you think would benefit from reading Fiona’s advice, it’s invaluable.
A: It seems like children are wearing make-up younger than ever before. Is there a ‘right age’ they should be allowed to wear it?
F: There is no ‘magic age’ when children should be allowed to wear make-up. It’s a very personal decision within a family and their social system too. It’s also important to note that the age families deem makeup to be appropriate is different cross-culturally; some cultures and religions allow children to wear makeup in their early years during ceremonies, events and festivals for example. But the most important rule of thumb for parents is that if it feels uncomfortable to your family unit, then it is not the right time.
There are three important points to bear in mind when talking to children about wearing makeup; put something in place you can stick to, avoid giving arbitrary dates or ages when your child is allowed to wear makeup, and avoid making comparisons to your child’s friends or other family members. Avoid saying things such as “your sister didn’t wear makeup until she was 13” and, “your friends that wear makeup look inappropriate”. The important thing is to keep the focus on your child.
Whatever information you deliver as a parent needs to be honest, exactly as you feel and something you can hold to - rolling back on your decision in a few months time is not good modelling. It’s best to avoid hard and fast date fixing, for example “you cannot wear makeup until you’re 14” because this leads children to believe that something magical happens when you put a candle on a cake - which we know it doesn’t. More appropriately you could outline to your child that you would prefer for them not to wear makeup for school and during the week, but suggest that you go together to choose some makeup they can experiment with at the weekend. At this stage, the makeup is more of a paint box that your child is experimenting creatively with.
It might be beneficial for parents to teach their children about skincare and looking after themselves, particularly in the teenage years when there is a higher chance of skin breakouts that can make young people self-conscious. Teaching them about a good skincare routine can also be a great bonding opportunity too, and it can also serve as a chance to talk about using makeup and what you think is appropriate as a family.
A: How much influence do parents have on their children’s perceptions of beauty and appearance?
F: From a very early age children like to copy what they see their parents and older siblings do, so to a large extent, the way your child views beauty is going to be similar to the way those around them use beauty. We learn by watching the world around us and the same goes for body-image related things such as make-up, fitness and dieting.
The primary carer - which is often a mum - is particularly influential up to the tween years. Then when a child hits the tweens, peers start to take the place of mums. The reason this happens is because our children tend to be mirrors of ourselves in their early years. Then when they reach the late tween and early teen years, young people really want to fit in and will be much more influenced by what's going on around them and striving to counteract any feelings of being ‘different’.
One thing to note is that parents often inadvertently - although sometimes overtly - label their children, particularly if there are siblings in the family. Try to avoid saying things to our children that are based on appearance or attributes, because it may lead the child to feel they are conditionally loved. An example is where a child who has been encouraged to dance and perform, and has been shown to be ‘beautiful’, may feel pressure to stay that way because their role in the family is based upon them being labelled as those things.
If a parent continually reinforces these messages, the child may come desensitised to it and could feel they are valued only for one thing - their appearance. The child may think ‘if I stop dancing, my body shape changes and I don’t look like this anymore, I might not have a place in this family or be loved’. Instead of commenting on things related to external appearance, such as ‘you look beautiful tonight’ or ‘your body looks great in that’ I encourage parents to say things that are about their position in the world rather than physical attributes, like, ‘the dress is a fantastic colour’ or ‘I hope you have a lot of fun this evening’.
A: How do you broach the subject when your child questions their appearance or wants to use beauty products?
Y: If you have a child who’s taken a sudden liking to beauty who hasn’t before then now is the time to discuss these things.
For parents, that means listening twice as much as they speak. In many ways, beauty is used as another language. It can sometimes display things that are not so happy on the inside or to cover up uncertainty and negative feelings. Some young people use make-up and beauty to express opinions they don’t have words for, others may use it to try and belong to a certain group of people. We often see that young people who have difficulty with their skin or have been bullied about their skin, wear more makeup. Watch out for those subtle changes because make-up is a real-life filter, often used by people to disguise something they’re not happy with. But, young people do not have the ability to make good permanent decisions so it’s hugely important parents do not encourage them to make permanent changes to their body such as getting tattoos, permanent make-up or cosmetic surgery.
Be aware of what your child is interested in, trying to copy or buying. Actively take steps not to buy clothes from shops that promote unhealthy messages such as clothes shops that stock only XS size clothing. As parents, we vote with our feet and money, and it’s important we take steps to avoid these types of brands. If you’re worried about what your child is trying to copy or if they are trying to fit into smaller-sized clothes, help them to reframe this by explaining that bodies are houses for really important organs and our house is unique to us or that clothes are designed to fit bodies, bodies are not designed to fit clothes.
A: Being taunted about weight seems to be one of the earliest forms of bullying. What do you do if your child is called fat by another child?
F: The words people use around body shape and size can be very damaging. If a child tells you they’ve been called fat by another child, actively listen to them, and avoid using outdated phrases such as ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me’. These types of phrases dismiss a child’s feelings, can be damaging and change how they view the world around them.
Try to use this moment as a vehicle to open up a conversation about body shapes and sizes. One of the things we can do in the home is to avoid using the words ‘fat’ or ‘thin’. It’s OK to explain what fat is and why we have it in the body, and it’s important to acknowledge the fat acceptance movement that’s gaining traction in the mainstream. But if you or your child are using those words in relation to appearance, it can be really damning.
If there’s an increase in the word ‘fat’ being used at school, you may find your child asking to have diet products in the house, such as diet versions of drinks and low-fat butters and yoghurts. The overuse of diet products is something that needs to be eradicated from the home early on. All parents would be well versed to do their homework on anti-diet culture, because we know that diets don’t work. Worryingly one-in-four children in England are on diets and the overall rise in the numbers of children trying to lose weight has been accompanied by a rise in those considered a healthy weight who are trying to slim down (ref: Health Survey for England). These children may then experience ongoing problems with dieting and body image as they move through their teens into adulthood.
A: Could our own behaviours around dieting be affecting how children see food and body size?
Y: Parents need to be careful with how they speak about food and dieting around children. Messages will be taken in as a whole so when a parent says, ‘we’ve eaten quite a lot today and haven’t done any exercise’, what the child hears is, ‘I am not worthy of eating without exercising’. In using this language, you may start to see calculator systems develop, rationing and feelings based on worth. This type of language is something that needs to be avoided at all costs with young people.
It’s essential that parents never refer to food as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ as this can be guilt inducing. Food is an inanimate object and should not be given human characteristics or human qualities. Never focus on the calories on the plate - it is simply not relevant and will cause more harmful thought patterns than it will cause helpful ones. Children copy their parents' behaviour and they do the things they act how they do to be accepted. If your child sees you eating a third of a portion of a meal, and then hitting the exercise bike to ‘burn it off’, your child will do the same. Avoid discussing sizes if you’re going clothes shopping with your child, particularly steer away from making comparisons between your size and their size because this brings in a potentially harmful competitive element. These are messages we don’t want to bring into a young person’s world.
A: How do you explain to them if you have had any cosmetic work done? Is there a way to do this without affecting their own self esteem and self perception?
F: It’s really important to have an honest relationship with children. If you’ve had cosmetic surgery or botox and your child asks you about it, be honest, although it might depend on the age of the child on how much you tell them. Always explain with the medical and factual angle rather than the highly emotional or self-critical angle. A parent who has serial cosmetic surgeries, will be largely unavailable for the time they are healing, and during this time, there will be a degree of emotional unavailability in the house that’s linked to appearance. In this sense, it signals to the child that appearance comes before they do.
But children and young people can sniff out fibs from a mile away. If you tell them they are beautiful as they are and they don’t need surgery, and you then have cosmetic surgery or an appearance-altering treatment, there’ll be an element of disbelief. Children will then map that disbelief across a number of other things. It’s also important that parents are careful with how they talk about each other's appearance. If a parent says, ‘I hate how your mum looks in that’, and the child has been told by someone else that they look like the spitting image of their mum, they may roll those conversations together and believe they don’t look good.
A: How do you work out if social media is affecting how they feel about their appearance?
F: If your child tells you they think they are unattractive or they compare themselves to social media posts with phrases such as ‘I’m not as pretty as…’ or ‘I’m not as special as…’ It's important to talk to them about individual uniqueness and the value of finding our own sense of style and self.
Quite often when someone says they feel unattractive on the outside it’s usually because there is something going on on the inside. If this happens, it’s critical to take an active listening stance - find out what they are feeling, where their sadness is, why they feel they aren’t fitting in and why they are feeling different. The key takeaway for parents is to avoid counteracting what your child has said - ‘no, you are prettier, and more beautiful’. If you simply counteract what your child has told you, they won’t believe you. Instead of counteracting, explore with your child what it is that they don’t like about themselves. By listening, you’ll be able to understand what’s going on inside. It may be, for example, that your child is not feeling confident about themselves. Take it away from appearance to something you can work on and change together.
The important point here is not to agree with the child, but to validate their feelings. A child’s dislike about their body will be linked to an underlying belief or fear they have about themselves - for example, “I don’t belong”, “I’m not as clever”, “people won’t like me” - so it’s important to uncover what’s underneath the surface. Parents can do that by keeping the line of questioning going.
Here’s an example:
Child: “I really don’t like my ears - they’re horrible”
Parent: “OK, that isn’t what I see but I hear that it’s what you see”
Parent: “When you look at your ears, what does it leave you feeling like?”
Child: “My ears are too big, they make me look stupid”
Parent: “OK, I understand that no one wants to look stupid. What does stupid mean to you?”
Child: “No one likes stupid people. I don’t want to not be liked”
It’s really important to let young people know that it’s really likely social media posts have been touched up considerably to alter the reality of that picture. Come at the conversation from a neutral point and explain that when an image has a filter or has been edited using an app, it doesn’t make the image good or bad. It simply makes the image an image. Start by taking a picture of something very simple in a room and look together at what happens when you start to edit the image with reshaping, filters, brightness etc.
Ensure you are not judging them, by saying to your child that they’ve made themselves thinner to look more attractive. As parents, we think we’re doing a good job here by telling our child not to edit, but what this actually does is implant the message that the thinner size body is more acceptable. This is really about artist preference - we don’t need to get into the whys of what’s going on for the person who has edited their body on a photo.
A: When should you be worried?
F: Although they aren’t always easy to spot, there are many early warning signs that something more is going on with your child. Some of the most common include: when a child becomes preoccupied with body shape, size and appearance, they obsess about the size of clothes, they spend a lot of time looking at influencers with particular body shapes and sizes, they use scales to weigh foods, and make comparisons between themselves and their siblings. If you notice these things happening, acknowledge it and recognise that as a family you need to do something differently. Most importantly, as the parent, it is your job to take the lead on that.
A huge thanks to Fiona, and let me know if anything surprised or resonated with you below! Very keen to know…
Much love…
This is astounding and frankly terrifying. But thank you for sharing - i feel informed on a subject I had no idea about.