For those of you who don’t know, my day job consists of
working with young children. During the school year, I teach pre-K. During this
summer, I supervise the Lord of the Flies at summer camp. Basically the kids
run amok and I help make sure no one dies or gets hurt too badly.
This summer camp is at the same preschool I completed my
assistantship at during grad school, so a lot of the children attending already
know me. Especially since I requested the younger group, I know many of them
from my two years as a GA when they were in kindergarten at the school, and the
rest from their kindergarten and preschool years. These children are fairly
comfortable with me, and in this casual environment I feel like there’s a lot
of opportunity to just hang out with the kids. I don’t have an ulterior
motivation to push an academic agenda on them, there’s no lesson plans that I
need to try to gear our interactions toward, I can just hang out with them and
get to know them.
The other day, one of our youngest girls was talking with
me. Our youngest group just finished kindergarten, so they are around 5-6 years
old depending on their birthday. I don’t remember how it came up but she asked
me if I ever wore makeup. I said that I did sometimes, but usually not.
As the conversation progressed, this little girl asked me if
I had any pictures of me “Pretty.”
“Show me a picture of you pretty.”
Due to the conversation progression prior to this, I knew I
had to clarify what exactly she meant. I
asked, “A picture of me where I feel pretty or a picture of me with makeup on?”
“Yeah, with makeup,” she said. “A picture of you pretty.”
I had to take a deep breath and process this. A six year old
girl was associating being pretty with wearing makeup. In her young mind, one could not be pretty and not be wearing
makeup. And it really bothered me.
In fact, recently I wore makeup to church. No big deal, I
wear makeup to church. But the past few months I haven’t been feeling well
enough to bother (more on this later). Putting on makeup for church was kind of
a big deal. As we waited for services to begin my husband asked me a question.
“What’s on your face?”
“Ummm, it’s called makeup.”
“That’s makeup?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t comment on it looking good, or bad. I think it
just was out of the norm enough for him to wonder what was going on. Please
note, that my husband has never commented on my makeup, or lack of makeup,
before this. In almost three years together, the man has never noticed enough
to say anything about it. As far as I can tell, my husband (and brothers and
dad and grandpa) does not equate makeup with being”pretty”.
Back to this little girl. As she waited for me to show her a
picture of me “pretty”, I didn’t take my phone out to show her a picture of me
with makeup on. Instead, I told her this.
“Well, I have a lot of pictures of me where I think I look
pretty and where I feel pretty. And most of them are of me without makeup on.” (
I tried to emphasize that the most important part of this was what I feel .)
I wish I could tell you that she learned a great life lesson
at this point, but in all honesty I don’t think she did. She continued on to
tell me about using her mom’s makeup to be pretty when she dresses up.
The best I can hope for is that one day this little girl
will remember a teacher she had who tried her best to teach her that being
pretty does not depend on whether or not a woman is wearing makeup.
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