Pretty Enough Without My Earrings

The other morning my daughter was getting ready for school and asked if she could stick small sparkly stickers on her ears like earrings. "Sure I said"

So she did, her hair was in a ponytail and she went to look in the mirror to check out her new bling.

She came back moments later and said "I don't think I'm going to ever get my ears pierced."

"How come?" I asked.

"Well I have long hair so you wouldn't be able to see them and I'm pretty enough without them."

I'm pretty enough without them.

That statement caught me off guard for a minute.

How lucky, I thought, that she has that moment, where she is pretty enough and at least, at this time, has self-awareness of it. I think we probably all start out like that. Pretty enough. And I wonder when it is that we decide that we are no longer pretty enough.  Is it school when we learn to compare oursleves to others? Hurtful things said by relatives? That first boy (or girl) who doesn't look our way?

How many times is our concept of ourselves (physical or otherwise.) determined by someone else?
When I was 30 I decided I was going to be pretty. I had never been pretty before. Oh sure, I've had moments of cuteness, occasional bouts with sexy, a handful full of good hair days. But by and large, I'm an average looking gal. At 30 I decided to try on pretty. I just decided one day. And it worked. I felt pretty. And other people responded to me like I was pretty in ways that I had not previously noticed. I owned pretty for that time.

Nothing about me changed except for my feelings about myself.

Flash forward to 40. I've kind of forgotten that time. I haven't thought about it in a while anyway.

Maybe I'll decide once again that I'm pretty enough without my earrings.