A letter to SELF magazine and Lucy Danziger

Dear SELF Editor-in-Chief Lucy Danziger,

You are the worst kind of bully. You're a bully getting paid to bully.

You are in a position of power. You may not realize it, but young girls look up to women like you.

Girls like my 8 year old daughter.

She is beautiful, strong, graceful in her own sort of way, creative, and kind. She loves to dance, sing, read, run, draw pictures, and write stories.

She's got long hair that's finally grown back in after she cut it all off to donate in honor of her big cousin who beat cancer (she was only 6 at the time). She has big hazel eyes and a smile that boasts too-big-for-her-mouth teeth and lots of spaces. She has 'sticky-outie-ears' and crooked toes. She's an average height and weight for her age, not too tall or too short, not too chubby or too thin.

And she struggles with her body image.

She's 8 years old.

It's women like you who have the power to tell her that she is perfect just how she is.

You can use your powers for good.

You can take your publication and tell my daughter, and so many other daughters, that it doesn't matter what they look like. That the only thing that matters is that they love themselves, and treat others kindly.

Instead, you choose to use your powers for evil.

You tell women that they are not good enough how they are. That they need to do this, that, and the other thing in order to feel better about themselves.

And then next month, you tell them that, oops, you're still not good enough, try this now.

Your latest faux-pas brought you into the spotlight. You chose to poke fun at the wrong person. And good for her for standing up to you!

She looked you, the bully, in the eye. She told you how it is, and that she doesn't care if you like her tutu or not. She is proud of who she is. She is confident.

She is beautiful.

In spite of you.

And you apologized.

But you didn't apologize because you were wrong. You apologized because you got caught.

Because Monika happened to have gone through some unspeakable pains and fought back. Because she had the strength and courage to stand up to you.

Would you have apologized had it just been an average woman? If it was just a mom, having fun, running a race, to show her daughter that she could do anything?

Probably not.

You need to realize that what you did was wrong. Not because you got caught. Not because you chose the wrong person to poke fun at.

It was wrong because of your actions. Because of your words.

And that makes you the worst kind of bully.

I hope that you choose to look at this situation and change yourself for the better.

I hope you use this in your future and model the behavior of someone worthy of the position you hold.

I hope you become someone that little girls can look up to.

In the meantime, my daughter, and all of her Girls On The Run friends, will be sporting tutus in their 5K this Spring.

Because they know who to look up to.

And it's not you.

Sincerely,
Brittni