The stories we want buried about our daughters.

We have hidden and buried our collective misdeeds to our daughters for a long time. We excuse our failures and complacency by suggesting that certain gruesome stories with our daughters must be buried in the past. The result is our daughters are still increasingly beaten down and shredded to pulp by these barbaric experiences at our hands.

We must refuse to bury our heads in the sands. Our homes, households and communities are on fire and our daughters are trapped within them by our inaction. It is time we take positive actions to learn, listen and act appropriately.

These are three of the stories we want buried about our daughters: How we make them feel about their bodies; how we make the feel about being female, and how we make them feel "unwanted" and "lonely".

How we make them feel about their bodies.

Parents, guardians , and adult professionals have unfortunately taken sides with our present-day celebrity culture, runway modelling agencies, the entertainment and fashion industry , some social media influencers to make them ashamed of their bodies.

We make them feel inferior when we make certain unqualified comments that infer that their bodies are out of place and out of shape, like:

“Look at her size and shape. That is the ideal for any lady”

Many believe that these words are meant to be motivational, to encourage a change of diet in their daughters but alas we are doing more damage than we can ever imagine.

When we make our daughters look at their bodies with disdain and displeasure, we have stripped them of the first most important layer of confidence on them. We are exposing them to the painful elements of shame, low self-esteem, self-doubt, and despondency.

When we insist in our educational institutions that our daughters wear “swim-like” shorts for physical education activities in-spite of their concerns, we are gradually eroding their abilities to see and appreciate their self-worth.

When our advertising and fashion industry promotes and champions very selected body shapes, sizes, hair styles, body complexions, as the face for their advertised products, they are saying to our daughters:

“Measure up. This is the standard you must aspire to”

“This is the look. You are out of shape and you lack the necessary complexion and style to really matter or make it in this career”

When we foolishly pass very hurtful comments on social media about the shapes , complexion, sizes of certain women; we are saying to every daughter, you are next in line for our unguarded attacks because you will never look “great” enough to be appreciated.

This is what I would say to these individuals who pride themselves in body shaming women and our daughter: You are shallow minded , and like pigs , you enjoy the “mud of stupidity”.

Our daughters are in a constant battle about how they see themselves under the light and pressures of us parents, guardians, professionals, and the various industries.

This generation of women and our daughters are inundated by pressures from which very few generations have had to deal with in the past.

Their body shapes are never good enough. They are told, they are too thin, too fat, too tall, too short, too light skinned, too dark, too hairy, too muscular, and have short hair.

Our daughters continuously have to deal with very unreasonable pressures. Take the instances where they are made to feel out of place because of their skin colour. They hear remarks like:

“Are you of the same parents. How come you are dark skinned"

"That is what a good girls skin should look like"

These comments are not only restricted to our words and the hurtful jokes we band around in the neighborhood but they are expressed in our conducts. Schools often prefer the light skinned to the brown or dark coloured skin girls.

It will shock you to know that the way we address this issue in many schools is to exclude the "brown" and "dark" skinned girls from certain external functions. Invited dignitaries are rarely welcomed to school events by the brown/dark skinned girls in many schools especially where there is a handful of light skinned girls.

Our societies, and institutions are plagued with a dark and sinister bias towards women and our daughters..

We must desist from using painful illustrations, comparisons, and innuendos as a disguise to care for their health and well-being. We must refuse the urge to wrap our daughters with our myopic and hurtful words that paint what we consider the idea shape and size for women and daughters.

Their health should remain an important conversation but that should always be done without comparing or belittling them.

How we make them feel about being female.

Our daughters are very different from our sons. Girls are different from boys. Girls and our daughters have such significance but our words and actions in our homes, communities, religious settings, social gatherings, educational institutions make our daughters feel less important than their brothers or male counterparts.

In many parts of the western world, we are subtly making our daughters and females feel inferior by our subtle suggestion that they may just be in the wrong body.

We are aggressively pursuing a narrative that says to our daughters, your feminine body is not important and counts for nothing in our conversation. Your body is not unique or special and there is nothing about your body as a girl for you to be proud of.

We have grown more ignorant about our daughters but insist we are better informed and as learned persons we can adequately redefine what our daughters or girls should think about their bodies.

In several other cultures, an all-female household is seen as burdensome and even “bad luck”. The daughters are made to feel out of place, insignificant and without any true self-worth in life. We make them desire the birth of “their saviour”, a brother.

The images on our screens, magazines and billboards are airbrushed to erase a woman’s stretch marks, cellulite, pimples and in other cases enlarge certain features like their breasts.

These are considered as flaws in a woman's body, but only by the ignorant.

The poisonous and ugly message we send to our daughters is:

"You don't have an option. If you want to succeed in this field, you can't be yourself in the "kind" of body or shape you have".

When will this wickedness stop? When we will realise that we have allowed and given permission to ignorance to bury our minds in shame and paint the future destinies of our daughters with disgrace.

When we separate our daughters from sons in the classrooms , we are forcibly saying to our daughters:

“You are not good enough to share the same space as the boys. You do not deserve our attention or future financial investments”

“Boys and men are better by design. Your place , even in academia, will always be after and behind them”.

Please bear with me. It is time we see the true essence of our daughters and women.

I understand and appreciate the sentiments of Professor James Peterson , the Canadian Clinical Psychologist, as it relates to the difference in career tendencies for men and women. I will however say this. If that is the general rule, there are many exceptions. Our daughters can be “outliers” by choice and also by interest.

Our daughters are eagle like. We must be prepared to first feed them but then gently stir them out of our nest to spread their wings in life. Without this, we will cripple them in life with fear and self-doubt.

How we make them feel “unwanted” and “lonely”.

We have fallen from a healthy pedestal of care for our daughters to one which is of terrifying disbelief. We have discountenanced the importance of our daughter’s emotional state and general well-being.

We have given ourselves enough reasons why:

- We cannot spend the time they crave with us.

- We cannot prioritise listening to their concerns and deep worries.

- We make our business targets our primary goal and the measure of our success in life.

We are responsible for our priorities. Our daughters are unique and a gift to us and our world. Discipline and structure will enable us to attend to the emotional needs of our daughters. We can begin by speaking words of affirmation to them.

Our daughters are in constant battles in their minds. They constantly hear loud voices say to them- you are incomplete, you will never measure up or fit into the class of the “desirable”.

Our daughters would like our unwavering voice of approval.

We must not allow ourselves the belief that we are ill equipped to engage with our daughters. You do not have to know all the answers. You just need to be present in their world.

We can all begin with very simple but meaningful activities like going for walks together, visiting the cinemas, writing a book together. You are good enough to make your daughter feel wanted and needful to you and our world.

I interviewed daughters of various ages and cultural backgrounds in London, and these were some of their thoughts about their dads:

“I was always judged and criticised by family members”

“I had very little positive attention. The excuse was – we had a large family”

“The distance of going to a boarding school made me feel alone”

“Living with extended family members, meant I could never truly be myself. I always had to be well behaved”

“His lack of attention and patience to listen to my views of the world and events”

“His lack of confidence in my ability to undertake certain tasks without his overbearing supervision”

“My inability to properly communicate my true love and admiration for him as a dad”

“How often he hurts my feelings by his negative attitude to my suggestions and intentions”

“His insistence (without many reasons or thought) of always being right on every issue I disagree with him about”

Everyone needs a shoulder.

Our daughters are PRICELESS.

Our daughters are a WONDER.

Our daughters are UNIQUE PERSONS.

A big thank you to my daughter, for reading through and making some corrections. You ROCK, my darling daughter.