How can women come to have a proper perception of their own beauty? I have a suggestion toward a partial answer.
A great beginning is that fathers learn to see their daughters’ beauty; and then tell them.
I think we fathers too easily forget that insistent voices are telling our daughters how to see themselves. Indeed, these voices are fairly screaming. How insistent and confident is our voice, and what exactly are we saying? Here is a matter for careful reflection. It might be more urgent than we realize.
There is a fascinating difference between men and women as regards being told ‘you are beautiful.’ Men surely want to be ‘attractive’ or ‘handsome.’ But we normally don’t speak of men as ‘beautiful.’ Or, if we do say ‘he is a beautiful person,’ we are often simply abstracting from the matter of his outer appearance.
With women it’s more complicated. While ‘she is beautiful’ can often mean simply ‘she is physically attractive,’ at the same time it usually refers to something both physical and beyond physical. This seems connected with how a woman’s sense of her appearance tends to be more closely tied to her self-image than a man’s. In a woman’s beauty, and her sense of herself, somehow the bodily and the spiritual can uniquely interpenetrate.
These are deep waters. Here we glimpse a natural difference between man and woman. We also glimpse how women can be especially wounded by a culture, or perhaps we should say by people, obsessed with things only skin deep.
A woman’s beauty is a human beauty and as such is both spiritual and bodily. Yet the all-too-common failure to see the connection, interplay, and hierarchy between spiritual and bodily things shows itself especially in how we see women. Here a cluster of ugly factors—significant among which are the moral failings of vanity, selfishness, and unchastity, especially among of men—conspire to reduce the true beauty of woman to a mere shadow of the reality.
A father’s place will always be to see what is there, to discover the truth. Part of the challenge is how bodily beauty, abstracted and considered in itself, can be greater or lesser. In other words, from this perspective, some faces are more suited for a painted portrait than others. But it is precisely this greater or lesser ‘beauty’ that too easily obscures or stands in for what transcends it, even while including it: the beauty of the whole person.
For the father, there is no call for pretending or deceiving. His daughter is beautiful. One can notice and appreciate real differences in physical beauty while seeing and confidently affirming the truly greater beauty, the beauty both spiritual and bodily. This is what anyone must see in order really to see this person.
Hearing the right words once or twice, or even regularly, will not in itself be enough for our daughters. Rather, what they deserve is a father who has governed himself so as to have eyes that see. And who then tells them, and conveys to them in countless ways, what is more true than either have yet fully realized: ‘You are so beautiful!’
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Image: The Young Shepherdess (1885) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Husband, father, and professor of Philosophy. LifeCraft springs from one conviction: there is an ancient wisdom about how to live the good life in our homes, with our families; and it is worth our time to hearken to it. Let’s rediscover it together. Learn more.
John, Can you please send me the new link to Sophia’s new blog?
Somehow my memory is very short-lived these days.
I wanted to finish reading her recommendations for children’s books and music.
God bless you and this inspiring, refreshing blog and Cuddeback family mentoring.
Cathy, Sofia’s work is part of this website. On the homepage you’ll see the tab for ‘Sofia’s Corner. Enjoy!
It IS urgent! Very urgent. This culture has sunk its claws deep into women’s psyche and self-image, to horrifying effect. I have come to see that the physically perfect young women demonstrating exercises in bikinis on TikTok are saboteurs of their own beauty, and beauty itself. And the grotesque surgical manipulation of celebrities’ bodies and faces signifies a profound desperation. The true beauty you speak of is grounded in reality, which we’ve totally lost touch with.
Fathers (and mothers) who help their daughters (and sons) see and cherish true feminine beauty do much to defend them from the ravages of immodesty, objectification, pornography… These evils utterly prey on spiritually insecure souls.
When a woman is in possession of the truth of her own beauty—and how to cultivate it—she is inured from these assaults.
Critically, women who are unaware of it—the cultural collective—have ceded control of sex and dating and marriage to men. This is the problem. Men characteristically rise to meet women’s standards. Women abandoned those standards to be more like men. Now we have sexual chaos. Fathers are absolutely the ones to lead us out of this disaster.
Lily, You touch on many aspects of the malaise in which we find ourselves. And as you note, it will be the truth that will set us free.
A dad’s affirmation of his daughter’s beauty cannot be encouraged enough! There can be a reluctance to express this for fear of encouraging vanity or just an uncomfortable feeling on dad’s part. Often the dad with a son or sons finds more in common with him/them and easily enjoys their relationship without consideration of the necessity of deepening the dad-daughter bond.
A daughter who has the blessing of a father who joyfully enters into her “world” and genuinely shows his interest in the beauty within her, will grow in confidence and grace and affection. You have wonderful wisdom to share and hopefully will continue to share in family dynamics guided by the Holy Spirit of love! God bless you, Dr. C.
Thank you, Linda! You express this point beautifully. You are so right that a man often has to go outside his comfort zone really to enter into his daughter’s world, and to affirm her there (especially as she grows into her teens…).
This is beautiful and necessary but can I suggest a nuance? I feel it would have been very awkward for my emotionally silent dad to tell me, “You’re a beautiful girl/look beautiful” though I loved the rare occasions I heard it from him. But I did hear it enough from other sources to believe it true, on a certain level, so that it didn’t affect me or make me feel better about myself inside.
My nuance is this: I think what I really needed, was to hear my father frequently tell my mother, “You’re beautiful, you look beautiful, you’re good, you’re smart, you’re right there, you’re good to me, I’m glad you’re in my life.” THAT would have made such a difference to me, to hear my dad affirm my mom’s deepest emotional needs, to make me feel that being a woman was something beautiful and not horrific and shameful. It may have helped her to be less strident and frustrated at not being heard or feeling loved and appreciated as well, and she would have been able to be more peaceful towards him as she continually served him.
“The greatest gift a father can give his children, is to love their mother” is soooooo true here.
Your article reminds me of a very poignant scene from “Cheers”. Although “Cheers” was not my favorite TV sit-com, this one particular episode (“The Coach’s Daughter”) shows Coach telling his daughter how beautiful she is, and how much she looks like her deceased mother. The daughter does not agree with him and painfully reminds him that her mom was also not “comfortable” with her own looks. Coach fills up with tears and says “Yes and that’s what made her so beautiful!”
That is poignant; thank you for sharing.
Also fathers, tell your beautiful daughters that they are smart and bright and fun and special and strong and that you like to be with them. If they have affirmation of these things from their father (parents), they will not need that affirmation from everyone else. Boys also need this!These affirmations will level the field for brothers and sisters so that they see their siblings as these things and so will not be jealous, and they will defend each other.
I particularly like your recommendation to tell them ‘that you like to be with them.’ And of course we also convey this by the time we spend with them.