Jezebel
In the first thousand words of a story I just read:
1. An eight-year-old receives a bikini wax.
2. A ten-year-old gets microdermabrasion.
3. Numerous children under ten get highlights.
Funny you should ask! This is not dystopian work of satirical science fiction. (Though there is a stylist who finds himself in a sort of Guy Montag type of role when a woman asks him to relax her 12-year-old's "beautiful, wavy hair.") (He now "hawks an all-natural product to moms who want to lighten their five-year-olds' locks; applied daily, it brings out subtle highlights.") No, this is a story in Philadelphia magazine, a place I used to work in a city I used to live, a city that always seemed disarmingly normal and unmaterialistic relative to my current place of business. So reading it was kind of personal for me, especially since I know its writer, Carrie Denny, and I have to say, it was weird reading sentiments of such earnest dismay as "Without the ugly years, when do you learn to accept yourself?" coming from her.
(Carrie is, like, fun and blonde and normal. She grew up in the area she's writing about. She is one of those girls who probably inspires suitors to draw lame "sunshine" analogies to her personality, but the analogies would not be inaccurate. She is really super friendly. I always figured she thought I was weird. Because I am, but you know. Anyway, I point this out only because, like, lately I feel like I am hearing feminist outrage in my life from all the last people you'd expect to hear it. Such as my mom, and my friend Angela. What does it mean? I think it means the apocalypse is really here this time! Wolf! Wolf!!)
Anyway, Carrie's theory is that somewhere girls lost their boy-craziness. It's not a bad one:
When I was in my teenybopper heyday, there were no pop chicks who I aspired to be. There were boys I aspired to marry. The media world surrounding us made us boy-crazy — maybe not a fabulous thing for a 10-year-old, but at least it didn't lead my friends and me to inject botulism into our foreheads before we could legally drink. It was innocent: We giggled, swooned, hung posters of Joey Lawrence and Luke Perry, giggled some more. And our moms were ... uninvolved. They didn't drop us at the playground with instructions to bring home the boy who looked the most like Kirk Cameron. They rolled their eyes, bemusedly shaking their heads as they passed by our rooms: Oh, you silly girls. End of story.Their mothers who need to find something better to do.Not anymore. Today's girls aren't looking at posters; they're looking in the mirror. They have a new obsession — a self-obsession — and it's being aided and abetted by their mothers.
Pretty Babies [Philly Mag]
Related: Never Too Young For That First Pedicure [NY Times]
Comments
A bikini wax for an 8 year old? What the hell does an 8 year old have to wax?
AN EIGHT YEAR OLD DOESNT HAVE ENOUGH PUBIC HAIR TO WARRANT A BIKINI WAX.
oh moe, why do you bring such stories to my attention?
my head is exploding.
Now is it OK for them to dress up like Belle from "Beuty and the Beast" instead of Jessica fucking Simpson? I'll take the Disney machine over Libby Lu any day.
Unfuckingbelievable. That's all I can say. This made me gasp & cringe.
This makes me want to cry.
I know girls hit puberty earlier now but what exactly is an 8 year old waxing?
There has to be some way to put these kids in protective services. I feel like an old guy on the steps of the nursing home, but what are these girls going to grow up into?
I don't even remotely believe this story. My bullshit radar is working overtime.
AARRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!
Seriously? SERIOUSLY?
And I thought it was bad the 10 year old I watch owns a straightening iron...
@ihateyourescalade: I think I'm going to believe your bullshit radar. Just because I need something to hold on to.
Giving an 8 year old a bikini wax is like using a lawn mower on a gravel driveway. Pointless, difficult and probably a little too painful.
Also, who the hell is this kid showing her bikini line off to?
Also, little girls are developing secondary sexual characteristics at an alarmingly young(er) age these days. Some people say it's hormones in food and milk, others say that this culture's sexualization of children actually makes their bodies react. It's probably chicken or egg. But it's not inconceivable that an 8 year old would have pubic hair. Sad, but not inconceivable.
@Boredinacubicle: What are they waxing, why do they need it waxed, and who is telling them they need this done??!!
@dosido: I wouldn't want them dressing like Ariel though. That shell-bikini? Pfffft.
When do most girls even get pubic hair? I can't remember when I got it though I can remember thinking "Damn, now soon it's going to look like my sister's down there".
I'll just wait patiently until the outraged "But my mom took me to the salon when I was younger and I'm totes fine/I take my baby girl to the salon sometimes, as a treat, and she's totes fine"-people drop in. Five... Four... Three...
How could you put your daughter through pain like that? These moms must really hate themselves.
An 8 year old has nothing to wax. Does not compute.
Unless that poor child had burn scars, there is no reason a 10-year-old should be getting microdermabrasion.
At what point does this become child abuse? When you take the girl scout troop to get group anal bleaching? Is that when Chris Hansen will step in?
an 8 year old has no hair down there!!! i'm so confused. and disturbed. WTF.
sad but true. I wonder what kind of mother those kids will end up being...
really? i can't believe, at 22, i can saw i've never had a bikini wax or microdermabrasion and CHILDREN have? time to drink.
I thank god daily my daughter was, is and never will be a girly girl. She's beautiful, but she doesn't care about it, she's smart and she only cares about her friends, not what other people think of her. She rocks.
(What, if anything, did I do right? I'm not sure. She had waist length hair until high school and I braided it and stuff, but never highlighted it. She never fussed about her nails, I didn't have acrylic ones then, and makeup for was for ballet performances only. She stopped wearing dresses when she was 7 and I didn't make a fuss except for fancy occasions. She didn't get her ears pierced until she was 12. Hm.... maybe I didn't treat her like a freaking DOLL? I don't take credit for her - she's amazing just because she is)
Please please tell me their April Fool's Day issue came out early.
My head hurts.
growing up (probably age 13 and up) my mom would dye her hair and take her leftover box color and dye mine with the extra. it was kinda cool and since my hair was already blonde anyway, it was no big deal. i still think there's nothing wrong with dying your hair since it's not like it won't grow back. plus, mom always did a great job.
however, she had a strict no makeup policy. i could paint my nails, but only colors she approved of and none of the flowers and other doo dads on the nails. furthermore, we never went to a salon - we always did it at home.
i draw the line in the same place, and a girl shouldn't know what a bikini wax is until she's old enough to figure out if she might need one.
But are they threading the eyebrows???
@BetsyD: @ineffable.me: In all seriousness... isn't your skin pretty much bare & hairless at age 8? Don't you have to have a good length of hair for a wax? How can this be true? If it is, who are these parents?
@bitchyolympian: You sound like a great mom, and your daughter sounds like a great kid.
Seriously, this makes me want to cry.
I'm sickened.
@BetsyD: I could've been waxed at 8. Not that I was.
When I was in 5th grade, I first started noticing I had hair on my legs; I remember a blonde friend comparing hers to my dark hair. I went home and begged my mom to let me shave. She said absolutely not; I was too young for that, and once I started shaving, I'd have to keep doing it, so I was better off waiting.
She was right.
(Granted, if I'd started shaving then, I would have avoided the embarassment in 6th grade when a boy grabbed my legs and then announced to everyone in class that my legs were hairy like a monkeys.)
I wasn't allowed to wear makeup until I was 16. In high school, I used permanent markers to do my nails, and also draw on my jeans. I had my first (and last) bikini wax for my honeymoon. Why do little girls even know what this stuff is? Someone give them a damn book already - like, Anne of Green Gables, not Gossip Girl - and tell them to so climb a tree.
@dosido: they might have pubic hair, yes, it's entirely possible. But, enough pubic hair for them to need a bikini wax? that seems like a stretch, non?
Bratz dolls! I blame the Bratz!
@haguenite: Once Ariel was a human, though, she dressed pretty modestly. Belle too.
Moe, Philadelphia may be pretty normal, but I have two words that can explain this bullshit: Main Line. And you're 1000% correct in your final sentence.
It really seems to me like there is a difference between painting your eight-year-old daughter's fingernails and all this cosmetic claptrap.
An eight-year-old needs to be covering the crotchal region -- her bathing suits need to not be skimpy -- oh Christ, I really need to believe that this is a hoax.
I'm pretty sure that if someone had tried to tell 8 year old BBF that such a thing as bikini waxing actually existed, 8 year old BBF would have either refused to believe it or run screaming from the room in horror.
@Jerseylicious: We were playing Truth or Dare in 5th grade at a sleepover and everyone had to say when they started shaving their legs. I wasn't allowed to yet, so I remember being really embarrassed and lying about it. But I got called out because I was wearing a big old T-shirt and they saw the hair on my legs. :(
It is kind of sad that I was the only girl there (out of like 5) who did not shave her legs yet, though...
@ineffable.me: In the article, the person interviewed from the salon stated that there was virtually nothing there, but the mother wanted a wax anyway. I can't imagine why.
The article also quoted a doctor who said that many older preteen girls who should have pubic hair do not, because they shave or wax it. That is horrifying.
Microdermbrasion at 10? Bikini waxes when there's no hair? Ummmm... I have a word for this. It's not primping, it's freakin CHILD ABUSE. The people in that spa should have called childrens services.
Those are scary and painful treatments especially for a child; and for what? To make a child more neurotic than their already whacked out mother?
I mean, it makes sense. Most mothers I think try and mold their kids in their own image, whether it's getting them to eat right or teaching them how to wear makeup. I definitely remember mine encouraging me to pluck my eyebrows around 13 or so. So when these moms get more and more obsessed with their own appearances, they expect their kids to be too.
This makes me so afraid to raise daughters. I know I won't be like that, but when you're at a school where all the other nine-year-olds have their hair dyed, you'll want your hair dyed too.
@blackbirdfly: yeah, i run in horror from bikini waxes NOW.
@layladylan: oh jesus christ.
can we just throw this whole thing out and start anew?
@Jerseylicious: dude, me too. i was made fun of for my hairy legs, but i'm glad my mom didn't let me start at that age. it would have sucked.
god, i feel bad for these kids.
@bitchyolympian: Sounds to me as if you should take credit for your wonderful daughter having her head screwed on right.
If you want your daughters to turn out like decent, lovely people, the recipe seems simple: don't overemphesize looks as the key to one's happiness (and I suspect these girls Moms believe this to be the case and are just passing on the 'wisdom') and allow your kids to be kids, not Mini Me, Mom v2.0, etc. It's getting tobe ridiculous.
@tellmeagain: they'll survive. my mom didnt let me dye my hair until i was a junior in college, and even then it was only a subtle color change.
half my class had been a bottle blonde since the 7th grade. yeah. it was weird. but i never did anything stupid or resented my mom.
isnt that sort of child abuse ... i mean its a pretty intimate thing for someone who isnt a medical professional to do to a child?
I hear what y'all are saying, but as someone who's been getting her Rudy Huxtable hair pressed in a salon since 8 and relaxed since 13, I can kindasortamaybe see why some kids are in the salon.
That being said, I wasn't allowed to wear makeup (save a recital or audition), nail/toe polish, have anything waxed, or shave my legs until high school.
I can't even get my 8 year old daughter to brush her hair and teeth on a regular basis.
At lunch today-- before I read this in Jezebel-- my Brazilian co-worker told us that she's had to wax since she was 9 because she is/was so hairy. So! It happens. But I don't think those stories are the ones that this NYTimes article tries to highlight.
I didn't grow underarm hair until I was 20.
My laser hair removal lady told me she's had clients as young as 8. They were getting the upper lips/moustaches done, which I guess is more defensible than a freakin' BIKINI WAX! WTF.
@chelotoyou: "You gotta, self-ex-press ... In the way-you-dress ... If you've got passiooon, show it in your fashiooon ... BURATZ!"
Don't ask why I know that. but yeah, I blame the bratz too
@Jerseylicious: My mom told me the exact same thing when I wanted to start shaving my legs. Dumb me though just stole her razor & did it anyway! Trust me though, I learned my lesson for starting early and make a point to shave as infrequently as possible now!