Part of being a mum, especially a mum to two girls, is that I teach them not to see beauty as skin deep. It seems every time I open a newspaper I read another survey about how hard girls are finding it living up to the spectre of skinny vacant role models that bombard our once cultured lives. But despite my pontificating that their cleverness, their kindness, their lovingness, their imaginations are what also make them beautiful, it seems my nearly-four year old has other ideas…….beauty is in fact, merely pink deep.

The other day I dressed us all up to go off and meet my friends for lunch, and I said to them, “You both look so beautiful today” admiring their pretty dresses. Daisy looked at me and then, returning to her dolly, spoke to me without looking. “But you are not pretty mummy,” she said in a disappointed voice.

I stood back in mock horror, “But why, Daisy?”
She looked me up and down. Yes, my three year old daughter actually looked me up and down.
“Well, your shoes are pretty” she conceded, noting they had a sparkling stone on them.
“And your clip” she admitted, seeing the sparkle there too.
“And your necklace,” she supposed, being that any jewellery is good in her book.
Pause.
“But mummy, your trousers are not pretty. They are trousers, and blue. They are not pink and not a dress and therefore they are not pretty. You are not pretty when you wear blue trousers.”

Well, you can’t argue with that.