Our culture pays lip service to female achievement, but every woman knows, deep inside, that her value is judged first by her physical appearance in most eyes.

It’s likely always been that way. Humans are drawn to physical beauty and praise it, even worship it. Deep inside, every woman longs to be thought beautiful, even if it’s only by one person. The way she sees herself is developed early, and her father plays a key role.

When a father fails to capture the heart of his daughter, it makes her terribly vulnerable. The father is the first man in a girl’s life. If he is distracted and operates under some illusion that girls raise themselves, tragedy follows.

The most precious thing a father can give a daughter is the gift of time. Not time spent with a daughter doing what he always does, but time that is spent on the girl herself. What are her interests, her delights? Her sense of self-worth is established by her father more than anyone else. It’s not that mothers aren’t crucial, but fathers have a potent role in the development of their daughters that is often underrated.

Girls have a need to feel loved and cherished. They need to feel attractive in a whole-person kind of way, but to feel physically attractive is also important. Admiration shining in her father’s eyes is more precious than anything else a girl can receive. Her heart gets a message from her dad, whether it is one of indifference, or one of love.

When girls don’t get this, when their fathers see their own ambitions, however noble, as more important than investing themselves personally in the lives of their daughters, the girls are at risk. Because a girl’s need to feel cherished will ultimately be met by someone.

How many fathers have stared in horror as their teen daughters have made terrible choices and then tried to pull back the reins? It’s a waste of time now, Daddy. When a substitute figure steps in and tells a girl she is pretty, that she is desirable and invests his time in her, he fills an aching void. Telling the girl then that that substitute figure is unacceptable for this reason or that will fall on deaf ears.

These same fathers then often cry, “rebellion!”, when all along their own neglect paved the way for a catastrophe. Girls, especially those who are emotionally vulnerable, anxious, and lonely, are prime candidates for easy seduction. When a father doesn’t know his daughter, he doesn’t see what is really going on in her life, and he endangers her.

There is a window that fathers cannot afford to miss, and it opens on day one of their daughters’ lives. Wise daddies will beautify their daughters with their love and generous attention. Because that’s what love does. It beautifies. It puts confidence in a girl’s heart, because she knows she is loved and lovable. And she is able then to develop in the rest of her life according to God’s plan for her. The seducers, the unwholesome men out there who are looking for easy prey will mean nothing to her. She won’t even hear their voices, because she will carry with her the loving voice of her own father, and she will value his guidance, not see it as interference with her happiness.

Girls today are crying out for daddies who will protect them, cherish them and teach them that they are valuable. The absence of this is what has produced this tragic genearation of sexting, self-harming, sexually misused young girls who have been robbed of their innocence, lied to about their value and thrown to the wolves waiting to use them and discard them.

Buried under the eye-liner, body-piercings, provocative clothing and exhibitionist behavior of so many girls today are sad hearts and souls, weeping for a daddy who never cared. And sometimes, there isn’t any black eye-liner, piercings or provocative clothing, just a sad heart and soul that is looking for someone to fill the void, but looking in all the wrong places.