Dear Daughter at 13, You Are Perfect

The day after my 13-year-old daughter asked to use my makeup to cover the splotches of acne dotting her T-zone, we found ourselves in Target’s beauty section.

I remembered what it was like to be her age. Even when acne was minimal, it felt massive, like a huge target drawing disgusted stares from everyone in the school halls. So, having made it to her final year of middle school, I knew it was time to arm my daughter with a few basic beauty items she was inquiring about but had not yet explored.

As we zigzagged our way through aisles that seemed endless, I felt more and more overwhelmed. After using the same few products for years, I’d forgotten how many options there are. The sheer number made me dizzy. Maybe even a little angry. Because where my daughter saw possibility, I saw empty promises. Thousands of them. All packaged up in eye-catching tubes and bottles and cute, colorful compacts.

As I compared shades of pressed powder, my daughter plucked one from its hook pointing out its promise of “breakout-free skin.”

“Well, that might be worth a try,” I said, keeping my skepticism to myself. We chose a shade that best matched her skin tone and set out to find a tube of concealer. As we searched—and got sidetracked by a number of other products—I couldn’t help but notice how each one practically shouted its promise in bright, bold lettering.

INVISIBLE PORES!
VOLUMINOUS LASHES!
LUSCIOUS LIPS!
SHINE-FREE!
SKIN PERFECTOR!
WIDE AWAKE EYES!

That all sounds so . . . good. Doesn’t it? But as a woman who was once a middle-schooler, I’ve learned time and time again that those promises never quite deliver. Oh, sure, maybe we enjoy a momentary lash boost or a few shine-free minutes—I know the power of a little mascara and a freshly powdered face. Maybe the glaring red of a pimple is dulled for a bit, or our eyes give the illusion of being well-rested for a time—nothing wrong with a little concealer!

But it’s not really about finding a few products that make us feel good. It’s that we fall into a trap of believing if we can just choose the right beauty products out of the millions displayed in shiny, well-lit cases, we can reach perfection. We strive for the flawlessness of the faces pictured on display cases and product packaging. We dream of perfect skin, perfect faces—as seen in ads, Instagram posts, and huge banners in beauty stores. We’re sure we’re just one product away from all those phone filters becoming completely irrelevant.

Is this what I communicated to my daughter as we shuffled through the aisles, though? No. It was late. My brain was fried. We completed the task at hand, dropping a handful of beauty and hygiene products into the cart, and checked out.

But as my eyes stared into the darkness of my bedroom later that night, I knew exactly what I wanted to tell her about our trip through those aisles:

There will always be beauty standards created by someone else—primarily by those in the beauty industry (because they make a lot of money off us!)—that none of us will ever be able to achieve. Not in real life, anyway. Not in embodied, face-to-face, walking-on-this-earth life.

The standards created for you, for us, will continuously change. The bar will always be moving, more and more products will continue to be advertised to us. And none of them will truly satisfy. None of them will feel like enough. None of them will perfect us in the way we hope they will.

You have to look yourself in the mirror. Really look. You have to tell yourself “The perfect God made me.” You have to know and believe that in itself makes you worthy just as you are. You have to look beyond the acne. The freckles that you hate (but that I love). The circles underneath your eyes, thanks to a later-than-usual night of homework. You have to look into your own eyes and see God there. No, you aren’t God (though the beauty aisles might persuade you into thinking you could be), but God is in those beautiful eyes of yours, for He created them so that your vision might be as clear as His. To really see yourself, made in His image, a beautiful human. A beautiful girl. A beautiful woman.

The beauty aisle is full of products known to break their promises. But one thing I can promise you?

You are worthy. Right now. Just as you are. Acne and all.

I just hope she’ll believe it.

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Articles by Jenny Albers

Jenny Albers

Jenny Albers is a wife, mother, and writer.  She is the author of Courageously Expecting, a book that empathizes with and empowers women who are pregnant after loss. You can find Jenny on her blog, where she writes about pregnancy loss, motherhood, and faith. She never pretends to know it all, but rather seeks to encourage others with real (and not always pretty) stories of the hard, heart, and humorous parts of life. She's a work in progress, and while never all-knowing, she's (by the grace of God) always growing. You can follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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