You go, girl !
I can’t help but smile and be amazed at my friends’ daughters. And they are the ones who have partly inspired me to write this blog entry. Let me start with one particular girl…
Bianca
My friend and I were talking about her 13 year old girl, Bianca. She wears her hair loose, wears t-shirts & her dad’s basketball shorts to most places, and for the most part doesn’t fuss about what she looks like. She’s into basketball & piano & likes to hang out with family & friends.
Contrast that to most girls her age who are already starting to put on makeup, are entering that phase of becoming boy-crazy, and are becoming enamored with shopping for brand name clothes & shoes.
I find it refreshing that this girl, in a world saturated with images of women who are thin & pretty, where a lot of girls & women are struggling with bulimia or anorexia to look a certain way, is nonchalant about her looks and is still unaffected by what the media is telling her how she should look like.
Dumbing down
I remember back when I was 14 years old & in 2nd year high school, I was competing at ‘Best in Math,” “Best in Science” etc. at our school and was placing either first or second. There was this one girl who was also competing in these contests & resented me for winning. We used to hang out but then all of a sudden she & her group of friends started snubbing me (kinda reminds me of the movie “Mean Girls”). Hoping to appease her & get on her good side, at the next competition, I purposely answered some questions wrong so that she could win.
Did she become nice to me after that? No. But I learned a valuable lesson that day. No matter what you do, if people are insecure & don’t like you, there’s not much you can do about it.
As a young teen, a relative told me “Huwag kang masyadong matalino. Walang manliligaw sa yo, sige ka, di ka makakapag-asawa!” To tell girls to dumb themselves down so that boys will like them ranks as one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard.
My opinion has always been I’ll be who I am. A guy has to like me, flaws & all. If he can’t accept that I’m a little bit smart, then it’s his loss, not mine. I want a guy who is secure enough in himself that he isn’t in the slightest bit threatened by someone who asks questions & loves learning.
I love the fact that today, women & girls have more options than previous generations. We can choose to be smart, empowered, athletic, choose any job we want, be a stay-at-home mom or be a working mother…all the while rocking that cute little dress and be gorgeous to boot 
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ayan ang mahirap na matagpuan ngayon someone who dont care how or what she looks basta confident at comfortable sya bakit naman kasi dapat makonsyous
Thanks for that great article. I two have two daughters (and one son), and I want to have the best for them and I’ll do all I can to make them excellent and whole…just like Bianca.
Kudos to her for taking the road less travelled. One thing that also makes me sad for today’s teens (and scared for my own children) is that not only does the media saturate them with pressure to look a certain way, our kids are also saturated by a lot of sexuality.
You see all over the magazines, on tv, in otherwise wholesome sites on the net, in books, even on Disney movies. It seems like today’s teens grew up way too fast.
I blog about my thoughts on the subject in the entry below. Hopefully, it’s a good enough read for you.
http://www.lessonsofadad.com/2011/02/teens-who-waitand-how-yours-could-be.html
Cheers.
I like this article and I surely can relate to it especially that phrase wherin the author writes “if people are insecure about themselves and they dont like you for being better in some ways than they are, theres not much you can do about it.I have gone through this all throughout my life and even at the present time. No matter how nice I am to people, they still are catty and mean.
i love your article..:)
your article made me smile…i can relate to what you had written especially on the part which a relative told you not be too smart or else boys wont like you. this is really funny hehehe…just like bianca, the girl in your article, i did not care much about make-up and stuff, i just enjoyed what makes me happy which is being me