U.S.B. 2.0

I have a daughter who's 9, but thinks (and behaves) like she's in her teens.

The other day, she kept going on how her hair is not right, how her skin colour is too dark and how she is - in general - quite ugly. No matter what we said or did could change her opinion of herself. And she really is quite a pretty girl (if I might say so myself), so I could not really understand where this was coming from.

So I went to youtube and showed her a couple of videos (specifically this one and this one) to show her how, as a society, we have a distorted and false image of beauty and that it matters more to be a beautiful person from the inside rather than worry about what people think of you from the outside.

I knew I had softened her opinion, but I had not won the battle.

So I went reverse psychology :-)

By some sheer coincidence, an advert for "Ugly Betty" was coming on TV at exactly that time. So I said to her, "yeah, you're right. You're just like her. But you're not really ugly, so you must be stupid! So from now on, I will call you Ugly Stupid Betty…USB for short!" And I would call her that every now and then. Every time she complained about it, I would remind her that I was merely agreeing with her original opinion, so she had no right to complain.

Finally, she looked at me and said "look, see my face, do I look ugly? I don't! So stop calling me USB"

So I changed it to USB 2.0 (Unbelievable Sundar Baby)…for those who don't understand Hindi or Marathi, Sundar means beautiful. So now she's USB 2.0 with the caveat that if she ever reverts to her original opinion, I will revert to the original name.

She hasn't once mentioned anything other than how happy she is with the way she looks the last few days...

Crisis averted! :-D