A star is born

I spent Sunday battling the rain and wind on the motorway as my 4 year old daughter was performing in a ballet show in the Sands Centre Carlisle. She was a star – literally. She had a star costume with a little hole for her head to poke out and of course I found her to be the most endearing little star to ever twinkle in the sky. 

My daughter was excited to be on stage, see her friends and did not show one ounce of stage fright, which left me rather in awe.

However what she was most excited about was getting to wear make up. I was and continue to be quite torn on this subject. One the one hand it felt harmless – stage make up is necessary due to the lighting, the costumes are over the top and the dance world is ‘bling’ shall we say.

Despite her protestations my daughter WAS pretty clueless when it came to make up. Anytime we played ‘dress up’ with my make up bag the effect was more clown like than Christian Dior.

However all changed on that fateful night in Carlisle. She came out wearing mascara, glitter eye shadow and lipstick and the result was pretty un-nerving for me. Of course I could have requested that she not wear any but then she would have been segregated from part of the fun and for what exactly? Would I not have been exacerbating the ‘issue’ by turning it into a big deal?

She is only 4 though and there is so much time for all this in the future. Is it teaching her she is not beautiful as she is and that she needs to wear this for anybody to notice her? So many questions and I suspect I’m reading far too much into it. It was a bit of fun and she loved it. However I did not love seeing her like that. In the future I will be giving her the answers to all my above questions and try to drum into her that she is so much more than blusher and lipstick.

We finally got home at 9.30pm and subsequently had a battle of wills as she declared she was ‘never taking the make up off ’. As I was running after her with our facial cleanser, she slightly redeemed herself by declaring it smelt like ‘unicorns’ – I might get her to write a review on our website.