model behaviour

Self-esteem and girls is a major issue. Speak to most adult women and they'll tell you they had major self-esteem issues as a teen - and some even as a pre-teen. There's a half a dozen reasons, or more, why this happens. Peer pressure, unrealistic images in the media... and your mother's attitude to her body and looks. 

I've always made it a point to never express any negative comment about my body - no matter how enormous or unattractive I may feel on any given day. Generally I'm pretty okay about it all. You know, my body holds all my organs in, my legs move me around, hands help me type... I scrub up okay, particularly with a smear of make-up. But I don't comment negatively about myself, or others, to my daughter. Hopefully this'll help her a little with her self-esteem. We also compliment her regularly on her intelligence, her sporting ability, her dancing - not enough to allow her to become deluded about her abilities - just enough. 

She's also got me as a role model for what a 41-year-old woman, who's had a child, looks like. She's seen my stomach and the rest of my body, and knows that this is normal - for me. So I pity Sunday Rose. In what I swear will be my final comment about Nicole Kidman (or She Who Must Not Be Named, Ever Again, Without Changing The Title Of This Blog To Nicole Kidman's Bad Plastic Surgery) what is Sunday Rose going to think when she looks back on pictures of her mum? She'll see what used to be a gorgeous red head, with a mass of curls, full cheeks, a normal nose and lips that tended to the thin side. Then, after Sunday's birth, she'll see a blonde generic glamazon with lips that now look like the love child of Angelina Jolie and Jamie Oliver. A girl will have to be pretty strong and well-adjusted to feel confident in her own looks, whether quirky or conventional, to overcome the impact of a mother who's constantly altering hers.