Advice for my Daughter

I saw this in Good Housekeeping and loved it. The author wrote if for the teenage daugher she will never have. Good advice to any girl.

a

Advice for my Daughter (when she becomes a teenager).

Even if you have just been shot with a tranquilizer dart for elephants, don't sleep in your makeup. Or contact lenses.

What separates a professional eyebrow arch from the amateurs is scissor-trimming. This is the least important item on this list, but It took me 38 years to find out, and I have to pass it onto somebody.

Wear the bikini every chance you can, and use the sunscreen.

Every year you can possibly delay having sex will ultimately make sex that much better. Think of it as the difference between spending every allowance on cheap shoes that don't last, or saving up for some really fabulous Jimmy Choos. Not that you have to go without even touching a pair of shoes in the meantime. Or marry your first pair of Jimmy Choos.

As long as you are in your teens, avoid dating anyone more than three years older than you. At your age, a romantic relationship with an older man is actually neither romantic or a relationship.

You look ugly when you gossip.

Throwing up drunk is not a good look for you.

Save this for later: the person you are now is not the way you behaved then.

Someday, a girl who is horrible to you now will request to be your Facebook friend. And though your cursor will linger a long and delicious moment above the "ignore" button, you will click on "accept" instead, and know that you have grown up.

Go to your prom. Wear the corsage. Stand under the arch. Get the pictures. Really.

Don't waste youth and resiliency. Have adventures. It will never be more appropriate for you to be inappropriate, and society will never be more forgiving. But avoid risks that will narrow your future. Skinny-dipping: yes. Filmed skinny-dipping: no.

Most importantly, hang around for womanhood. I promise, the best is yet to come.