I remember when I first realized that there were different types of beauty. I was in high school and my mother was writing an article about a man who had traveled to Korea to teach English. He was at our house and telling my mother all about his adventure. I was sitting quietly out of the way because I knew that my mother was working. He talked about teaching and getting a small part in a Korean soap opera.

He made a comment about there being a different type of beauty in Korea and he looked right at me. He told my mother that I would have very nice features to a Korean and that in Korea I would be considered quite pretty. I was shocked. Nice features? How could that be with my straight black hair and flat nose? I don’t remember much more about the conversation, but I do remember that I was pretty pleased with the revelation.

Now, I think it’s a little easier for parents of Korean adoptees. There are a lot more Asian role models in the media now and some of them portray some pretty smart tough men and women. It’s so important that parents remind their children that there is beauty in every race. It doesn’t have to be blatant and it doesn’t have to be all the time. An offhand remark about how pretty so-in-so is when you see a picture is enough.

When the Reactive Attachment Disorder blogger’s daughter said she wanted to be like her mother and sister, oh, I can understand. I was there. My sister was there. We wanted to fit in with our family, our friends and complete strangers. We don’t want to worry so much about what is on the outside, but it’s a fact of life that we do. You can say that it only matters what is on the inside until we are blue in the face, but the bottom line is that to some extent the outside matters too. If you’re not comfortable with your outside, it’s hard to be confident in your inside.

I can remember my mother telling me often that she wished she had my hair. It was something minor and at the time didn’t mean that much to me, but now I realize that it was important. It gave me something that someone else wanted. While I longed for rounder eyes and longer eye lashes, I had something that someone else envied.

As far as advice, I’m sorry that I don’t have any really good answers for anyone. We can work through it as the situations come up and hope that we are doing the right thing. For some adoptees (like me), we pretty much learn to move on without much help and recognize that we can be our own person. For others, like my sister, they need someone from the outside to validate what their parents tell them over and over again. While still others, unfortunately, may never see themselves as beautiful (outside or inside).

If you would like to comment, but not on this site, please feel free to e-mail me at adoptkoreablog@adoptionmail.com