“Love your body the way your mother loved your baby feet.” – Mary Lambert, I Know Girls (Body Love)

I’ve been listening to that song up above the last couple days and that one line has stuck with me. I heard it and I immediately thought back to a week ago, as I watched my sister cradle her perfect daughter in the middle of a dark night. There were happy tears in her eyes as she kissed her head and touched her every limb, making sure she was all there.

Pretty little Dahlia, more beautiful than her floral namesake. Her feet stuck out from the blanket she was wrapped in because she’s so tall and it was hard to hide. Her brother, not much older than her, made sure everyone who visited noticed her “little feet.” He admired them and saw a beauty that many people later on forget about.

I now ache inside at the thought of this beautiful little girl, and others like her, growing up in a world where they don’t always appreciate the beauties that they are. I worry that they won’t always think about the many months their mothers spent keeping them healthy and growing so that each part became God’s masterpiece.

I ache that someday someone will make an offhanded comment that won’t seem like much but to one little girl it will be enough to make her big, dark eyes become wet.

I ache that someday, no matter how many times their dads hug them and tell them how beautiful they are, they won’t always believe it. They’ll instead spend hours looking in their mirrors seeing imperfections where there isn’t any.

Today’s standards of beauty have reached ridiculously unattainable levels. I remember being 12 and spending hours trying to get my hair to do exactly what I wanted. I remember folding my lanky body in, hoping no one but at the same time everyone, would notice me. I remember the hurtful comments. The young boy who when I was 14 told me I’d be pretty if I only lost a little weight. The mother who mocked my pre-teen size in an attempt to make her daughter feel better about herself. The ex-boyfriend who complained that I no longer fit his standards of beauty. All those moments and more stick with a girl, no matter what age and no matter how brave of a face she shows to the world. And it’s not a solitary instance, I think every girl has these type of experiences as she grows up. A girl quickly learns that to this world, your only as beautiful as others allow you to feel.

It hurts me to think that it can only get worse from here. I ache for my niece and future daughters or nieces. We are always looking for ways to make ourselves ‘better’ but when did we ever learn that we weren’t enough? When did it become okay to be told that our idea of beauty wasn’t right? Who gave away our right to decide our own worth?

My hope for my little niece would that she would never have to experience the hurtful words of mean girls, cruel boys, careless relatives, or naive strangers. That she never has a day that she doesn’t look at herself and like what she sees. That she always remembers that beauty isn’t always physical.

I hope she realizes that she’s more than the freckles on her face or the curls in her hair. I hope that she doesn’t accept what the world defines as beauty. I hope that she doesn’t let the world silence her but instead always faces it stronger than she was the day before. I hope that she always take the strength, wisdom and love that her parents will have shared with her over the years and use it to diminish the demons of self-hate.

My final hope for the little girl who lit up a room in the middle of the night, is that she will continue to know as she grows up that to so many people, people that truly matter, she’ll always be seen as the most beautiful girl in the world.