Dear John,
<p>When I started researching L’Oréal’s latest Urban Decay campaign, I thought I was ready for whatever I’d find. I wasn’t.</p> <p>As part of the work, I clicked on the Instagram account of their new model, Ari Kytsya, a porn performer hired to promote Urban Decay’s makeup line that’s made for girls as young as thirteen.</p> <p>Instagram has a feature that shows you which of your friends follow an account. Two of my own young adult daughters showed up on that list.</p> <p>I just sat there staring at the screen.</p> <p>The first feeling was pain. Then frustration. Then embarrassment. And finally, rage.</p> <p>Even as I write this, tears are coming to my eyes. It’s difficult to relay this, even to friends I know will understand.</p> <p>I wasn’t angry at my daughters, not really. I was heartbroken that they had fallen into the very trap L’Oréal set for them. My precious girls, raised in a stable home, taught modesty, purity, and self-worth, had been lured in by a brand that decided pornography is the new definition of empowerment.</p> <p>L’Oréal was the brand my grandmother wore. I used it as a teenager. Now it’s telling my daughters, and every young woman, that sex work and pornography are glamorous, that “uncensored” means confidence, and that boundaries are something to mock.</p> <p>I don’t know how long my girls have followed this woman, but I do know this: she’s not just selling mascara. She’s selling a lie.</p> <p>It’s complicated when your children become adults. You can’t shield them anymore, but your heart still tries. I felt so disappointed, and at the same time, furious at a corporation that decided it could sexualize an entire generation and call it art.</p> <p>Some parents choose to avoid makeup altogether for their girls. Maybe they’re wiser than I was. But whether our daughters wear lip gloss or not, one day they will make their own choices about who they follow and what they believe is beautiful. And that’s exactly where this battle is being fought, on the phones in their hands.</p> <p>And as a mother, I feel like Gandalf in that scene from The Lord of the Rings, standing between evil and the ones I love, staff in hand, shouting from the core of my being, <strong>“YOU SHALL NOT PASS!”</strong></p> <p>I don’t know exactly how to talk to my daughters about this yet. They’re both adults now, and these conversations can be so delicate. I want to reach their hearts without shaming them. I want them to see what I see, that something sacred is being stolen in plain sight.</p> <p>Have you ever had to face something like this? Maybe with your kids, or grandkids, or other young people you have invested your life in? If so, how did you handle it? I would really like to hear from you. Sometimes just knowing we aren’t alone helps us keep standing when the world feels too far gone.</p>
For our girls,
<i>Anna</i>
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