Working Moms Blog

Should teenage girls wear make up to school before age 16?

I just went over to Yahoo! Answers to play. I like to visit and see what questions interest me and answer the ones that do.

Yesterday I saw one asking for help to apply eye liner make up, a category of the board I had never ventured into and remembered how hard it was to learn how to apply eyeliner in my teen years. I wrote out an answer and just as I was ending with ‘Have fun’, there was a surge in the power and my computer went out. Lost!!!

So a bit earlier, I went back over to see if I could find the question again but couldn’t. What I did see were quite a few questions asking for help from young teenage girls or asking about what age is good to start wearing make up everyday.

My mother was strict. I couldn’t wear makeup outside of the house until I was in Grade 11. I was allowed to practice putting it on at home before that though.

In addition, most schools here in Jamaica still require uniforms. Makeup is simply not an option for teenage girls going to school here.

So I was a bit surprised to see a question over at Yahoo asking if it was OK to wear make up everyday to school and seeing most of the answers saying yes.

Hmmmmmm…

Maybe I’m old school but I feel teenage girls need to concentrate on learning at school. I realise the U.S. is very different from Jamaica but I still feel limits are fine. There are so many aspects to beauty other than what we see in magazines and on TV and like you probably do, I tend to stress inner beauty first.

Self worth has become such an important issue throughout our world that I feel it warrants us going back a bit to basics. My mother taught me that it was my inner qualities that were lasting and important and that outer beauty and knowing how to put myself together well was wonderful but not the more important of the two.

I think teaching our children how to create lives that express peace, harmony, giving, gratitude, love, compassion, wholeness, tolerance and wisdom everyday will go a much farther way to expanding that throughout the world. Then as older teens and young women, our daughters will wear make up that only highlights their natural outer beauty and reflects their fully developed inner beauty as well.

I responded to the question by that young school girl by suggesting that she wait until sixteen to start wearing a bit of eyeliner and a light lip gloss. I also suggested that she could in the meantime practice taking care of her skin by getting an excellent skin care system with cleanser, toner and moisturiser, as good skin is always the key foundation of outer facial beauty.

What do you think? Do young girls have enough pressure to grow up from the ads on TV, society in general and their peers? Is the rest of their life too short to wait until 16 to start wearing make up everyday?

My daugher is now 8 and we’ve already discussed that piercing of her ears and wearing makeup will wait until she’s 16. My sister, who lives in the U.S. and who also has an eight year old daughter is also grooming her to wait for certain things until she’s sixteen.

Pray that we both maintain our sanity, continued friendship and harmonious agreement on limits with our daughters as they reach their teenage years!!! ;-
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