Stop the world, I want to get off. In America, pre-teen girls are getting bikini waxes.

pic credit: daily telegraph

While we all take a moment to recover from that nauseating news, let’s look at the bigger, less alarming picture. Even here in Australia, beauty salons are becoming the new playground.

Why ride your bike in the street when you can pay a professional to paint your nails? Especially since Mum and Dad probably won’t let you ride your bike in the street because it’s dangerous.

When I was a kid, I didn’t know anyone who’d ever had a manicure. I didn’t even know what a manicure actually was. Back then, it was a mysterious practice a bit like ‘plastic surgery’ - something done by posh women, far, far away. Not remotely connected to my life and certainly not something I aspired to. The only thing painted on my nails was stop-and-grow. And occasionally, when I was bored during science, Liquid Paper.

Until I was a teenager, make-up was something strictly for grown-ups. Occasionally, I played around with Mum’s lipstick and eye shadow but I never lusted after cosmetics let alone beauty treatments. Make-up counters at department stores were as intimidating as a bottle shop and an equally inappropriate place for a young girl to spend money.

But now? There’s kiddie make-up everywhere. It’s as ubiquitous in the landscape of a little girl’s life as fairy wings and lollies.  It’s free on the cover of magazines for six year olds. It’s in toy shops and kids’ clothes shops. Brands like Barbie and Disney have their own cosmetics lines. And please don’t get me started on the evils of Bratz Dolls because I may never stop ranting, raving and generally gnashing my teeth and you may need to eventually sedate me with Valium to shut me up.

Little girls playing with make-up is not a new thing and it’s hardly sinister. What’s new is taking it out of the context of dress-ups at home and into the adult arena of a beauty salon. What’s new is having someone other than mum or a big sister or best friend apply the polish or the make-up. What’s new is paying for it. What’s new is beauty as a hobby, an activity for weekends and birthday parties.

But it’s too easy to just wag a moral finger and sigh about “kids these days” and the evils of the beauty industry marketing to children. It’s too simplistic to say “why aren’t they climbing trees and riding their bikes like we used to?”

There’s very little in life that’s the same as a generation ago. Just like our own parents never wore jeans in their forties or had mobile phones or email or drank bottled water or payed $5 for coffee with silly names like double skinny frappucino…it’s naïve to expect this generation of little girls to behave the way their mothers or nannas did.
`
That doesn’t mean mindlessly embracing every social change or not questioning things that feel wrong. You still need your personal lines in the sand. Mine include bikini waxes for pre-teens, little girls wearing make-up in public and have I mentioned Bratz Dolls?

But take a look at the bigger picture. Women in the previous generation didn’t get bikini waxes. Did they bleach their teeth? Use $100 eye creams? GHD their hair? Have spray tans? Blow-dries?

The kind of pampery behaviour that was once reserved for movie stars and bored, rich housewives is now fairly standard for many. Today there are cheap nail salons sprinkled liberally through every shopping centre and they’re packed with women of all ages and incomes getting $25 pedicures.

Facials, massages, manicures, teeth whitening, eyebrow shaping, fake tans, laser hair removal…. somehow in the past decade, these things morphed from indulgence to basic maintenance. They are to this generation what getting a haircut every three months was to previous ones.

In that context, it’s not THAT MUCH of a leap to the fact that little girls are having Princess Parties at beauty salons instead of playing Pin The Tail On The Donkey. I may not agree with it but I don’t condemn it.

FYI, the fact that kids’ parties have evolved is not a new phenomenon. I’ve been going to birthday parties as a parent for ten years and I’ve never seen a game of pin the tail on the donkey. It’s been years since I’ve watched kids play pass-the parcel. A pity perhaps but times have changed. So have we. And so have children.

Would it be lovely if they could have the kind of innocent, less materialistic childhood we had? Sure, but the genie is out of the bottle. Would you like to live the same life your parents did at your age? Want to give back your mobile phone and start wearing slacks or pantyhose?

Little girls want to go to beauty salons because Mummy does. And little girls will always want to copy Mummy. Just ask Kate Moss. Her daughter Lila is now four and behaves in exactly the way you’d expect of a supermodel offspring. As Moss told UK Vogue last year, "She comes in at bedtime and says, 'Mummy, do you think this is a good look?' and then she has a fashion crisis. Now we lay the clothes out before she goes to bed but then she goes, 'Mum, I need options.' When we were doing Versace [the ad campaign]…Lila and Donatella struck up a friendship. They put a weave in Lila’s hair and she had this long blonde hair down to her waist, and she was going like" – Moss tosses her hair back, vamp-style – "and I was like, oh ... my ... god."

Precocious? Inappropriate? Or just like mummy? Of all the behaviour that could be copied by a child of Kate Moss, I’d say hair flicking and being a fashion diva is the last thing to be worried about.

Comments

[Emma]

I dunno what upsets me more, that my kids might want Bratz dolls or that they won't want to play pass-the-parcel!
What do kids do at parties nowadays?!

[Eve]

You're page has gone psycho again!
I tried to look at the Monday morning madness (on Sunday nite!?) and I dunno whats wrong but the page won't load... can't watch the video and the rest of the main page wont load either...
Just thought I'd let you know.

[Dataceptionist]

I find this all so very very sad. I don't have daughters yet and I terrified for them. I don't want them wearing leopard skin boots and denim minis. But I don't want them to hate me for not letting them dress/act like that either.
Sure we have our personal lines in the sand, but how do you explain your lines to your kids?

On the bikini wax front, I have a friend who is a beauty therapist and while she was working in Mosman she was shocked at the age of some of the girls that came in for waxing. She said to me, they're 13! They hardly have any hair to wax!

[Cerry]

I'm having the same problem as Eve with the page. I think it's something to do with the Monday Morning Madness clip - the main page isn't loading properly, and neither is the actual monday morning madness entry, but everything else is.

And anyone under the age of about 15 getting a bikini wax is kind disturbing - how many people are actually going to see it? Sure, they might wear bikinis, but they also wear boardshorts with said bikinis, to cover up their thighs.

[lu]

My 6yo daughters friends are all getting their nails & feet done at one of those cheap nail places these school holidays. Of course she thinks it sounds like lots of fun and thinks I'm being mean for not letting her have it done too. I've seen young girls (6,7,8 years old) at swimming lessons and they have fancy decorations on their toe nails! I just dont think its appropriate but think I'm fighting a battle I cant win.

[Emma]

I'm having the same problem as Eve and Cerry with the Monday Morning Madness stuffing up the page and not working...Anyone else?

[Cerry]

Lu - I assume that if you're seeing kids at swimming lessons with painted nails, your daughter swims? It might be worth pointing out to her that chlorine water tends to strip nail polish off. She might change her mind about getting her nails done (of course, she may also decide that she doesn't want to swim. In which case, I said nothing).

[lu]

Hi Cerry - Yes, I'm on the weekly merry-go-round of swimming lessons with my kids ! I'll take your advice with the chlorine tip. She's coloured her toe nails with purple texta today so hopefully I'm off the hook for a while.....

[Nicky]

I have a friend whose daughter has been getting pedis since she was about 1. We sell fantastic nail polishes in my store that are completely non toxic and in great kid colors and they fly out. I've aske friends who have daughters...none of whom have heard of tweens getting waxed...ICK, but manicures and pedicures, yes.

[j-girl]

my kids are going to hate me because i am *so* playing pass the parcel at their birthdays, not to mention musical chairs, statues AND pin the tail on the donkey!

If anyone asks, I'll say that we're doing 'ironic retro'.

what are they waxing these girls with? a pair of tweezers?

i get the point about not living in the past, but like you mia, i think that you should always question and question always.

i also grow tired of everyone moaning on about 'kids these days' and how they can't stand the things do/consume (both orally and as consumers), only to discover that they are the ones paying for the pedicures/waxes. seriously, if you don't want your kids to participate in these things then it's really simple - don't buy into it yourself as a parent!

on a personal note, i had a couple of spray on tans and then i saw 'little miss sunshine'. i was absolutely horrified to see the scene where they spray on tanned a 6 year old.

and then i thought about it. if a 6 year old doesn't need spray on tan, why do i?

haven't had one since...

[Nicole]

My 3 year old daughter is obsessed with makeup. Prior to her third birthday she was happy with the ‘lipsmacker’ lip balm that I bought her, so she could 'be like mummy'. But for her birthday some 'well meaning' friends who were aware of her joy of lip gloss bought her a full makeup set. It was packaged for children, but as I've found out the hard way, still stains furniture / clothes the same as adult makeup.
Yes, I could throw it out, but instead I keep it hidden and occasionally let her indulge in her 'face painting' under strict supervision and tell her she is not allowed to wear it out of the house (apart from the nail polish, which doesn't just wash off).

It's a fair comment from a 'non-parent' to say 'if you don't want them to have it, don't give it to them', but in reality it’s not that simple. When they are constantly exposed to these things at the shops / on the TV / at their friends’ houses, shouldn’t you as a parent teach them how you would like them to play with it instead of strictly forbidding it? When I do let her use it, we treat it more like a game where we do each other’s face and I tell her that we looked more beautiful before the 'painting', and then we wash it off.

I am a fellow hater of the whole Bratz merchandise though, and will do my best never to have any in our house. However she still stops in the toy aisle to admire the Bratz dolls and tells me she 'loves them' and 'they're beautiful' and I tell her that I don't like them and they're NOT beautiful, and steer her back towards the baby dolls, prams and dolls houses that I love.

I'm not quite sure where her perception of beauty has come from. Granted, I do wear makeup (minimal), and take pride in my appearance, but I have never gone to the beautician, my nails look far from manicured, I only go to Just Cuts for a quick trim, and I mostly wear casual clothes other than to work.

I just can't believe she even cares about any of this at 3... Makes me wonder what issues I'll be dealing with in another 10 years or so.