Principal’s Post on Empowering Young Women
Since 1935, Our Lady of Mercy Catholic College has held a legacy of instilling the values of leadership, excellence and service, nurturing confident young women. We empower our girls to make their make on society with confidence and compassion.
Dear Parents and Carers,
The article below highlights May Ling Halim’s study on the values girls place on physical appearance from as young as three years of age. Here are some key points from the findings;
- Early Focus on Appearance: Girls as young as three years old start valuing “being beautiful” and by age five, some even restrict their diet to achieve an ideal physical image.
- Gender Differences: Girls are about five times more likely than boys to place value on their appearance and choose appearance-related reasons for their preferences.
- Preschool Influence: The study suggests that gender differences in emphasis on beauty likely start in preschool, with implications extending into adolescence, affecting mental health, academic performance, and career aspirations.
- Cultural Influences: The early 2000s “girlie-girl” culture and the Disney Princess franchise have contributed to the focus on physical appearance from a young age.
- Intervention Strategies: To counteract this focus, it’s important to expose girls to diverse toys and games that promote problem-solving and creativity, and to change the language used around girls to emphasize attributes beyond physical appearance.
| Girls as young as three are attributing value to physical appearance Taken from ICGS, Issue 10 | June 27, 2024 There is currently an extensive focus in schools, the media and among health professionals about the impact of social media on body image and girls’ mental health. But when do these issues really start? Is social media the root cause, or has it become a space where pre-existing idealised body imagery becomes magnified? May Ling Halim, a developmental psychologist and Professor of Psychology at California State University, has led a study to assess when girls’ focus on appearance actually begins. And the results are concerning. During this study, researchers worked with children aged three to five to establish when girls begin to value “being beautiful” (Halim, 2024). They found that girls as young as three years of age are already demonstrating a concerning focus on appearance and personal attractiveness (Halim, 2024; Halim et al., 2024, p. 1). In fact, by age five, some girls even begin restricting their diet in order to achieve what they perceive to be an ideal physical image (Halim et al., 2024, p. 2). Across every assessment undertaken during this project, girls said “that to be a girl they needed to be pretty, and looking pretty was important” (Halim 2024). This included girls choosing “fancy” clothes and occupations that are related to appearance, such as models and makeup artists. Many girls’ preferences for fictional characters were also chosen because selected characters “are pretty” (Halim, 2024). Even more concerningly, girls were approximately five times more likely than boys to place value on their appearance, or give appearance-related reasons for their choices in response to questions. The outcomes of this research were so compelling that Halim and the other researchers in this study concluded that “gender differences related to how much emphasis we place on beauty likely start in preschool” (Halim, 2024). What makes this potentially more concerning is that implications of this extend well beyond preschool. By the time girls reach adolescence, they are “primed to be preoccupied with how they look”, which places them in a vulnerable position when combined with the use of social media (Halim, 2024). This can then lead to negative impacts on physical and mental health, academic performance and even career aspirations. Awareness that this is happening is only part of the story. We also need to consider what is driving this focus on physical appearance for girls at such a young age. Gender development experts have already suggested that the early 2000s saw the new “girlie-girl” culture develop, which was also influenced by the Disney Princess franchise which was launched around the same time (Halim, 2024). The concern is the risk that the body image issues occurring in adolescent girls and young women are actually starting in the preschool years. This is much earlier than the target age for many current intervention measures (Halim et al., 2024, pp. 11-12). While tackling social media use and body image issues in adolescence is of course vital, more must be done to address this preoccupation and value being placed on appearance at a much earlier age. This is especially important during kindergarten and preschool, “as it’s during this time that children typically begin to strongly identify with a gender” and begin to form gender stereotypes (Halim, 2024). If we are going to change the prevailing focus that “girls are defined by how they look and boys by what they do”, then we need to change what information girls are receiving (Halim, 2024). One of the key ways to do this is to consider what messages girls are receiving on a daily basis. Halim suggests this can be done by considering the toys girls use. Children do not understand the metaphors that we as adults do, and many toys can create perceptions of idealised physical appearances and “standards that are impossible to attain” (Halim, 2024). Exposing girls to a diverse range of toys, especially those that have varied and accurate physical features, can be an effective counterbalance to this problem. There are also many toys and games that focus on areas such as problem solving, creativity and STEM, but young girls are often not exposed to these items because “our culture is still so influenced by gender stereotypes” (Halim, 2024). In addition to providing access to these diverse toys and games, we can also change the language we use around girls. Rather than immediately focussing on appearance or clothes, it is especially important that we focus on other positive attributes and reinforce their value. Teachers and parents can also be aware of not only explicit messages, but implicit ones, such as girls watching parents apply make-up, or teachers and family members “favoring more attractive children” (Halim et al., 2024, p. 13). The strategies suggested by the researchers don’t prevent girls from developing a sense of pride in their appearance, but they do highlight that this can be done without defining one’s value based on physical characteristics. While families and teachers may go to great lengths to encourage girls to explore their value beyond physical beauty, messages about placing value on physical attributes and appearance may still reach girls through advertising, products, friends, extended family, media, movies, social media and television. We can’t control what corporations and companies will do, but we can make informed choices about how we engage with the young girls in our lives. This is critically important, because it provides an opportunity for families and educators to do as much as possible to show young girls that they will each have a unique beauty, but that “their value does not depend on that beauty” (Halim, 2024). References: Halim, M. L. (2024, May 29). My lab conducted a study on preschool girls. What we discovered should disturb you. Huffpost. Retrieved 18 June 2024, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lab-preschool-girls-study-beauty_n_663faf84e4b0866a5b2bfb51. Halim, M. L., Russo, L. N., Echave, K. N., Tawa, S., Sakamoto, D. J., & Portillo M. A. (2024). “She’s so pretty”: The development of valuing personal attractiveness among young children. Child Development, 1-17, advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.14104 |