I like to think I’m a pretty easy-going mom. And my daughter Georgia is a reasonable child. Quite often though, she has ideas that don't particularly thrill me. But she is very thoughtful and argues her points very persuasively. So I end up employing my favorite parenting mantra, "What does it hurt?" I weigh her argument, and very often she gets what she wants.

“What does it hurt” is a good test for me; if it hurts someone else, it’s not OK. If it hurts the environment, we need to make another choice. If it hurts something we need or love, think again. And if it hurts me by making my life a lot harder, there have to be some compromises. If she doesn’t want to wear a coat, “What does it hurt” makes me realize, as long as she’s not in danger of frostbite or illness, it’s OK for me not to fight that fight. And it’s OK for her to do messy experiments with play dough, glitter and toothpicks, so long as she's not using one of my favorite tiki mugs and is prepared to clean it up. And the resulting experiment can’t be slathered on the cat.

So when she wanted to play with makeup, I figured “What does it hurt?” She loved painting her face at the Children’s Museum, so I got some non-toxic pastels for home use so she didn’t have to wait for a museum trip to become a housecat, tiger or Harry Potter. And when she asked to use some lipstick, I didn’t have a compelling reason to tell her no. I don’t wear a lot of makeup, only when Hova and I are DJing or on the rare occasion we have a date night. And she wanted to play big girl, just like wearing pretend high heels and dress up clothes. So I let her play with lipstick. I even let her wear it out sometimes, though there are more times when I tell her it's not appropriate for a child to wear lipstick. And she grouses and says, “It’s not fair!”

But it’s one of those things I haven’t quite worked out for myself. She wants to feel pretty, sophisticated, older. Isn't that what we all want to achieve (well, not the older part)? She says, “Don’t I look pretty?” and I cringe, thinking there’s nothing prettier than her bare face. I have to own that I gave her this belief -- that makeup is pretty. Or did that come from society, even in her sheltered, limited-commercial upbringing? In my gut I feel that this is just another form of play. She’s just working this thing out, like everything else she’s pretending, from breastfeeding her stuffed animals to shooting [1] bad werewolves. I am uncomfortable with her thinking makeup will make her more attractive, and she has definitely attracted attention when she’s dressed up and has lipstick smeared into a clown smile. People react and say, “You look so beautiful!” and it’s true, though not in the way she imagines. It definitely reinforces the fancy clothes+makeup=beautiful thing, but it also demystifies makeup as just another tool in life, like scissors, which she is an expert at using, or knives, with which she handles carefully in the kitchen, or Sharpies, which are respected and used with vigilance.

I think the fight I should be fighting is that the sparkly purple eye shadow and lip gloss set she got for her birthday is surely packed with all sorts of artificial, dubious ingredients [2]. I don’t like her putting impure, unregulated, potentially toxic products on her skin, to be absorbed into her system or eaten off her lips. It’s not like she plays with makeup every day (or even every week), so that concern is probably a little overblown, but that stuff has some nasty ingredients. When makeup is a real issue, we’ll talk about the purity of it (and I’ll switch to cleaner makeup, just like The Green Makeup Artist [2] advocates), but for now when asking myself, “What does it hurt?” I am hoping that by not making makeup an issue, it will be less of one for her.

Photo credit: nessadoll77 [3]