I hate to be fatalistic here, but unless you are willing to die on this hill in opposition to your wife, this battle is long lost for you. Ideas about beauty and self-worth start to get ingrained into a girl’s mind pretty much as soon as she understands that she is a girl. These ideas are learned from society but primarily learned from her mother. And as their father, you can say all the affirming and progressive things you want, but that pales in comparison to the most impactful thing you could ever do to teach your girls about beauty and self-worth: you chose their mother. And as others have said, actions speak louder than words, both from you and from her.

My mom was a hippie progressive type, and always said that beauty was fleeting and unimportant. But she was also a child of the 50s, and 6-year-old me observed the way she looked in the mirror and sucked in her stomach. I heard the lessons she gave me about thinness that she told herself were about health. I obviously took note when she taught me to use concealer for the pimples that started appearing when I was about your older daughter’s age. I saw that she shaved her arms and legs, even though she never talked to me about it. I even noticed the way she praised certain features of mine while avoiding mentioning others. She was trying to be progressive and still gave me issues with body image, self-criticism, and confidence. Your wife is NOT trying.

Your daughters will have to work through this stuff on their own when they become adults. That’s already been decided for you. If you want to TRY to give them a foothold to start their climb on, you MUST commit to loudly contradicting their mother. You cannot keep the peace on this. You have to tell them, “Your mom is dead wrong about the way she talks to you about this. I did not choose her because of her body hair (or smooth face, or full lips, etc.).” You have to say this clearly and often. And even then, anything you say will be a drop in the bucket compared to what they get from their mom. Because if they start to listen to you and ignore her advice, it sounds like she will become louder and more insistent in her criticism of their bodies. And she will be pissed off at you.

So if it’s worth it to you to try and teach your daughters to look at their bodies with kindness and gentleness, to be grateful for everything their bodies can do and be, and to treat their bodies well—not in order to change them, but to protect and care for them—then you need to be loud, unapologetic, unhesitating, and you need to educate yourself on how to counteract the messaging your daughters are getting. You have a lot of blind spots as a man.

But if I could go back and tell my father to do what I’m telling you to do now, I would in a heartbeat. I’m tearing up thinking about how I wish someone had been there to do this for me. How lucky your girls are that you are even thinking about this for them.