Raising Confident Girls One Household at a Time

November 10, 2017
By Dette Zulueta



Recently, I was invited to attend the #ConfidentGirl Forum organized by Dove and Mommy Mundo. As a fan of Dove's #RealBeauty campaign, I immediately confirmed my attendance and excitedly attended the forum. Little did I know that this event is life-changing for me as it opened my eyes to a reality that I was never aware of. 

The premise of this forum is that a lot of young girls nowadays have beauty anxieties and have low self-esteem and these negative feelings are caused by factors such as the media, peers, family members and unknowingly by their own mothers.

Have you ever experienced telling yourself, "I look ugly today." or "I am getting fat." or "How I wish my hair is super straight. I need a rebond!" By saying all those most especially in front of our children, consciously or unconsciously, we set a criteria that result to early beauty concerns as well as dissatisfaction of their #realbeauty. 


Apples Aberin (Unilever PR Director), Janice Villanueva (Mommy Mundo Founder), myself, Nish Ching (Millennial Moms PH Core Team Member and Mom Blogger), Neil Trinidad (Unilever Marketing Director)


As a mom to a 2 year old girl, I was strucked by the #confidentgirl forum. It was a wake up call for me to be more careful of my words, my example and the way I address my own beauty issues. It led me to be more mindful of this reality so as not to prompt negativity to my daughter or to any young girl. 



Good thing, Dove reminds us that "every girl deserves to feel beautiful" and that there is #realbeauty in each of us waiting to be appreciated. To address this issue, Dove started a campaign called the Dove Self-Esteem Project to help moms start the self-esteem conversations at home with their own daughters. Conversation guides that come in the form of easy to understand and implement modules may be downloaded for free by moms via this link: http://bit.ly/2g3ecur.






As described in the Dove Self-Esteem Module, "the guide is made up of a series of articles covering 9 key topics that affect girls’ self-esteem. Each article starts out with an introduction to a theme and why it is relevant. Then, to help guide moms in making practical changes, they put together an Action Checklist full of body confidence boosting ideas from self-esteem experts. Finally, they have added a Let’s Get Started section, to give moms some ways to start the conversation immediately."


Here are the first 3 topics that I started to read and my takes on each topic:

1. Learning to Love Yourself


Positivity starts with ones self. Thus, if we want to spread good and positive vibes to our children, we should get rid of all the negativity that we have in ourselves. We should make a firm resolution to appreciate ourselves always. We should not be harsh with ourselves by highlighting our flaws and focusing on our insecurities. We should look for the good qualities and be happy and contented with our #realbeauty.

2. Body Talk: Use the power of your words to feel great

We may not notice it but most of the time, we talk about our flaws. We would always here a "fat talk" in the gym, in the dressing room, in restaurants or in our very own houses - in front of the mirror. We should learn to convert this negative talk to a more positive one so as to encourage and uplift ourselves and other people. 

3. The Distortion of Beauty


Gone were the days when airbrushed models are just seen on magazines. You may see it all the time most especially now that everything is online. We are exposed to professional models and to self-proclaimed models in social media. Access to filters and beautification apps give any of us a flawless and poreless look. Some apps may even make faces slimmer, noses smaller and eyes bigger. In short, any physical flaw has a temporary cure now. However, these unreal images of beauty contributes to lower self-esteem and self-confidence. Did you ever experience not wanting to post a photo because you are not happy with how you look? Did you ever try to manipulate your photo just to make you prettier? We should start embracing our #realbeauty and accept it. We should not compare ourselves to models and celebrities. We should be able to differentiate #realbeauty from manipulated images or artificial images. We should look at ourselves in the mirror and discover our #realbeauty.

We are just in the first three topics and it already gave us good insights, learning and realizations. Join us in promoting #realbeauty and raising #confidentgirls one household at a time! Download the Dove Self-Esteem Project Modules now and let us make ourselves and all girls feel beautiful and good about themselves.

*Images and statements in purple are screenshots from the Dove Self-Esteem Project modules.

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