The singer Pink won the Video Vanguard Award at last night’s VMAs. In her acceptance speech, she spoke about teaching her daughter about beauty, acceptance and the long history of androgynous rock stars after her daughter said she looked like “a boy with long hair”. It’s such edifying, sound advice that we wanted to share it here too.

Recently I was driving my daughter to school and she said to me, out of the blue, ‘momma’- I say ‘yes baby’- she said ‘I’m the ugliest girl I know.’

And I said, ‘huh?’ And she was like ‘yeah I look like a boy with long hair.’

And my brain went to ‘oh my god you’re six, why, where is this coming from, who said this, can I kick a six-year-old’s ass, what?’

But I didn’t say anything and instead I went home and I made a PowerPoint presentation for her and in that presentation were androgynous rockstars and artists that lived their truth, are probably made fun of everyday of their life, and carry on and wave their flag.

[I said] ‘Well what do you think I look like?’ and she said ‘well you’re beautiful.’

And I was like ‘well thanks, but’ I said, ‘when people make fun of me that’s what they use they say that I look like a boy or I’m too masculine, I have too many opinions, my body too strong, and I said to her, ‘do you see me growing my hair?’ She said ‘no momma.’

I said ‘do you see me changing my body?’ ‘No momma.’

I said ‘do you see me changing how I present myself to the world?’ ‘No momma.’

‘Do you see me selling out arenas all over the world?’ ‘Yes momma.’

‘Ok, so, baby girl, we don’t change. We take the gravel and the shell and we make a pearl. And we help other people to change so that they can see more kinds of beauty.’