I think she thinks we're condescending or obviously trying to talk her out of it or something. I don't know.
When I was her age, I reacted poorly (q.v. "biting") to people being "complimentary" when they insisted on evaluating me in terms of values that I repudiated, most especially "prettiness" and "cuteness". I was tolerably OK with "beautiful", but nobody ever says to a small girl child that she is beautiful, and in any event, my attractiveness, as if I were an object existing to please the aesthetic tastes of others around me and affirm their cultural norms of what a female should look like, is not and has never been an acceptable topic of discussion to initiate with me. Not from a construction worker hooting, "HEEEY BAAABEEEE", and not from a matron cooing, "OH HOW CUTE".
Yeah, at 3.5yo I was the world's shortest feminist.
no subject
When I was her age, I reacted poorly (q.v. "biting") to people being "complimentary" when they insisted on evaluating me in terms of values that I repudiated, most especially "prettiness" and "cuteness". I was tolerably OK with "beautiful", but nobody ever says to a small girl child that she is beautiful, and in any event, my attractiveness, as if I were an object existing to please the aesthetic tastes of others around me and affirm their cultural norms of what a female should look like, is not and has never been an acceptable topic of discussion to initiate with me. Not from a construction worker hooting, "HEEEY BAAABEEEE", and not from a matron cooing, "OH HOW CUTE".
Yeah, at 3.5yo I was the world's shortest feminist.