The end of childhood

April 4, 2008 9:05 AM

Where has all the pubic hair gone? After sweating through the [eight-year-old girl's] eyebrow wax, Engle [...] was directed to give her pint-size client a … bikini wax. “But … there’s nothing there, right?” I ask Engle. “I mean, at eight? Am I forgetting something?” “Nope,” she says. “There’s not. Doesn’t matter. That’s when the mothers are starting them these days.”
posted by desjardins (207 comments total)

and by mothers she means lunatics.
posted by zeoslap at 9:11 AM on April 4 [13 favorites]

"When I was in my teenybopper heyday, there were no pop chicks who I aspired to be. There were boys I aspired to marry ... 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."

So the pube-waxing epidemic isn't bad because it reflects an unrealistic standard of beauty that's impossible to attain, it's bad because it leads girls to focus on themselves instead of their future husbands? I'm not sure I can get on board with that.
posted by transona5 at 9:13 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

You can have my lunch. I'm not hungry anymore, and I'm moving out of the solar system.
posted by not_on_display at 9:14 AM on April 4 [43 favorites]

I haven't read the link, but regardless I'm calling bullshit. No slight to you desjardins, but I'm not certain I want to live in a world where such a thing takes place. I find it easier to plug my ears, hum and shout "I'm not listening". Sometimes willful ignorance is the best policy.
posted by Keith Talent at 9:17 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

I don't suppose there's any chance that this is just a beautician fucking with the reporter, is there?

Or maybe there's, like, two examples of this in the history of the world, from seriously fucked up moms, and it's just been turned into a feature story to get readers? Is that possible?

Because I have a lot to do, and I really don't have time to work in hours of weeping in rage and desperation at the bottomless ignorance of the human race today.
posted by lore at 9:17 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

The end of childhood

Not sure it ever existed for a few...this logically follows from things like JonBenet Ramsey style beauty pageants...what concerns me more is that mindset seems to be expanding outward.
posted by StrikeTheViol at 9:19 AM on April 4

Ugh, as a resident of the Upper east side in Manhattan, who is currently half way through my pregnancy, I am terrified of having a girl and having these mothers be the mothers of her peers.

I think we may have to flee before the kid starts walking.
posted by gaspode at 9:20 AM on April 4

“It was clear that this girl was getting a bikini wax no matter what,” she says. “Better for her that we did it, instead of her mother dragging her off somewhere else to get it done.”

Really? Seriously? I am not so sure about this. I would not have done it. I don't understand. If some rabid mom brought you her eight year old daughter and insisted that you punch her in the face, would you do it because someone else might if you don't? I kind of get that maybe she thinks that their wax is less painful than others, but there's no painless wax, and frankly, a bikini wax on an eight year old girl makes me incredibly uncomfortable. When I read that, I immediately thought it was abuse.
posted by prefpara at 9:24 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

Dear Western culture,

Quit fucking up your kids,

love,
Common Sense
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:25 AM on April 4 [9 favorites]

No, not just a beautician saying these things:

“I’ve actually been joking that I’m going to write a book called Where Has All the Pubic Hair Gone?” Janice Hillman, a doctor in the Penn Health System at Radnor who specializes in adolescent medicine, tells me. “It’s such a rarity to find it these days in 10- and 12-year-old girls, and older girls. I need to check for it at that age — it’s an indicator of puberty and development, how much there is, where it’s growing. And now, I need to ask girls, if it’s not there, ‘Do you wax? Do you shave?’ Because so many of them do.”

You know, there are reasons why grown women may choose to wax or shave. I can't think of any reason that would apply to a 10 or 12 year old girl who wasn't being raised in a turn of the century New Orleans bordello.
posted by rosebuddy at 9:25 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]

Every generation has had fatuous dipshits with unhealthy (and creepy) obsessions about the beauty and sexuality of their children (among other things). Until there's some way to measure an upswing in such a thing as a social movement, I have to assume that articles like these are anecdotals intended to fuel book sales for reactionary fools like Wendy Shalit or some other idiotic right wing/puritan political agenda.
posted by psmealey at 9:27 AM on April 4 [9 favorites]

But that is part of the point-- you can't flee it--this is a growing phenom with lots of trickle-down.
Remember when tatoos were just about the nastiest thing around?
Then rich people got them.
Then the Soccer Moms and Dads.
Now little Cindy and Johnny.
From the manicured Hamptons lawns to the suburban duplex next door, sex sells and kids and mommies and daddies are buying.
Yikes.
posted by Dizzy at 9:27 AM on April 4

You know, there are reasons why grown women may choose to wax or shave. I can't think of any reason that would apply to a 10 or 12 year old girl who wasn't being raised in a turn of the century New Orleans bordello.

Same reason some girls wear bras before they need them -- they want to feel like grown-ups.
posted by brain_drain at 9:29 AM on April 4

Amen, prefpara. "I'm a crack dealer, and it's really sad how young some of my customers are these days. But they make it clear that they're getting crack no matter what. Better for them that I sell it to them, instead of them going to another dealer to buy it."

If the esthetics industry- you know, the one that INVENTS this bullshit and the one that sells self-hate to women (and men- look at all the hair removal ads in gay mags these days)- offends you, maybe it's not the line of work you should be in.
posted by ethnomethodologist at 9:30 AM on April 4

Narcissism by proxy.
posted by StickyCarpet at 9:30 AM on April 4

Remember that crank from a couple weeks back who said what we really need in this country is a reprise of the Great Depression? Sometimes I think he has a point.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 9:32 AM on April 4 [10 favorites]

A number of sub-Saharan Africans have started a campaign to stop this mutilation of young girls' bodies.
posted by GuyZero at 9:33 AM on April 4 [30 favorites]

Here's what I found most frightening in the (excellent) linked article:

“I’ve actually been joking that I’m going to write a book called Where Has All the Pubic Hair Gone?” Janice Hillman, a doctor in the Penn Health System at Radnor who specializes in adolescent medicine, tells me. “It’s such a rarity to find it these days in 10- and 12-year-old girls, and older girls. I need to check for it at that age — it’s an indicator of puberty and development, how much there is, where it’s growing. And now, I need to ask girls, if it’s not there, ‘Do you wax? Do you shave?’ Because so many of them do.”

Up next? Computer programs based on photos, X rays, and MRIs which show you what your kid will look like all the way up to 25 or so, and plastic surgery now to improve the trajectory and the final destination.
posted by jamjam at 9:36 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]

If there's no hair, can you even wax it?
posted by dabitch at 9:36 AM on April 4

A friend of mine down in the South told me his high school daughter told him some of her friends were getting breast enhancement surgery as graduation presents.

That floored me.
posted by dw at 9:38 AM on April 4

Dear women; stop making yourself look like 9 year old girls. Signed,

all men who aren't fucked up.
posted by Justinian at 9:38 AM on April 4 [25 favorites]

W. T. F.
posted by VicNebulous at 9:39 AM on April 4

Or maybe there's, like, two examples of this in the history of the world, from seriously fucked up moms, and it's just been turned into a feature story to get readers? Is that possible?

That's what I'm thinking.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:40 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]

I'm sorry. I know I should read the whole thing before posting. But I keep getting tripped up by how complicit the salons are and how they don't even bother to justify their involvement.

They go from telling them it might be a bad idea... to telling them... to having them sign a waiver? I used to work at a beauty salon. We would have refused to give an eight-year-old child a painful, unnecessary wax on her vagina. End of story. What is this nonsense?

This new, unstoppable desire of mothers to pluck and paint their daughters has created an unexpected conundrum for spa owners and aestheticians, who can’t afford to lose the moms’ lucrative business — but who also don’t want to be partners in crime. When moms book appointments to get their preteens waxed at Pierre & Carlo European Salon & Spa inside the Bellevue in Center City, owner Joseph Cutrufello makes it a point to run through with them exactly what will be happening to their child (read: pain, sweating, high ­probability of ensuing red bumps on young, sensitive, not-in-need-of-a-wax skin). At Bernard’s Salon & Day Spa in Cherry Hill, it wasn’t enough to simply suggest to moms that it’s not the best idea to apply harsh chemicals to the scalps and hair of their six-year-olds just to make their hair “more blond.” “We’ve flat-out told mothers that highlighting such a young girl’s hair is a bad idea, and something we’d rather not do,” says Carla Ciociola-Toppi, the spa’s marketing director. “But so many mothers push anyway that now we have them sign a waiver.” The waiver basically states that the spa prefers not to perform various services on children, that the mom understands this, and that she decrees it happen anyway. “It’s so weird,” says Ciociola-­Toppi. “It’s like they’re stage moms.”
posted by prefpara at 9:41 AM on April 4

I'd rather a mother indoctrine their daughter with the concept of bikini waxes than rabid homophobia. In the scheme of things, I'm not sure why I should be outraged by this.
posted by Stynxno at 9:43 AM on April 4

I still can't believe they sell bikini underwear to eight-year-olds. Who the hell is going to see it, apart from her mother?
posted by desjardins at 9:43 AM on April 4

Why are we insisting on increasingly sexualizing our pre-pubescent and pubescent daughters? This isn't an isolated incident. It's part of a trend, the same trend that brought size 6X thong underwear and pants for little girls with terms like "juicy" emblazoned across the ass. The trend that made it ridiculously challenging at times for me to find clothes for my daughters, when they were pre-teens a few years back, that were reasonably modest. The trend that has faux tattoos with "sexy," "juicy," "hot," etc., marketed at kids barely old enough to ride a bike. The trend that involves young model-wannabes' parents setting up web sites with glamour shots of their pride and joy in bathing suits and skin-tight gowns and miniature exotic dancer wear. And we talk about a crisis with pedophiles on teh internets coming after our kids, oh noes!, all the while feeding the monster.
posted by notashroom at 9:43 AM on April 4 [8 favorites]

Stynxno, go get a bikini wax yourself and then report back if you think it's a good idea for children.
posted by desjardins at 9:45 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]

Stynxno, I am also outraged by homophobia. I'll let you know when I hit my outrage limit so that you can make sure I've included all the important causes.
posted by prefpara at 9:47 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]

Is there a definition for the uncanny valley-effect when talking about human behaviour? Because this shit right here is a text book example of a concept that almost resembles something a human would come up with but is still so fundamentally inhuman and wrong that it makes me want to run to the hills screaming.
posted by slimepuppy at 9:49 AM on April 4 [9 favorites]

A friend of mine down in the South told me his high school daughter told him some of her friends were getting breast enhancement surgery as graduation presents.

Just last week: Florida Teen Dies After Complications During Breast Surgery.
posted by ericb at 9:51 AM on April 4

Why are we insisting on increasingly sexualizing our pre-pubescent and pubescent daughters?

I don't think "we" are doing any such thing. I think that garment manufacturers make this crap, and a certain amount of it is snapped up by thoughtless parents who think it's "cute" or "hip" or something, without much a plan in mind.

My problem with articles like this. It sounds the alarm for OH NOES WE'RE ALL GOING TO HELL, while at the same time stoking resentment for either the rich ("these motherfuckers have too much God damn money"), or playing on the envies of the insecure.

The fact of the matter is that most everyone I know that has young kids, is reasonable, thoughtful, mindful, and has nothing but the best of intentions for their childrens' well-being and emotional growth. It's only OTHER PARENTS that are whoring out their kids, at least as reported by New York Magazine and its ilk.

Seriously, guys. Move along. You're getting played.
posted by psmealey at 9:51 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Why are we insisting on increasingly sexualizing our pre-pubescent and pubescent daughters?

I'm not totally convinced that's what this is. Beauty rituals aren't transparent bids for male attention, there's more to it than that. This is something women do that girls want to do- mom gets her nails done, daughter wants her nails done, mom does her eyebrows, daughters want her eyebrows done. I'm not offended if a mother wants to model or share various methods of self-care to her daughter.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 9:53 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]

Couldn't you call the cops on these bitches?
posted by Vindaloo at 9:54 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

About face: more and more teen girls are willing to do almost anything to look good, including going under the knife.
posted by ericb at 9:54 AM on April 4

Dear women; stop making yourself look like 9 year old girls. Signed,

all men who aren't fucked up.
posted by Justinian

The article is about 9 year old girls, not women. But thanks for taking the time to tell us your own personal hang up, even if it has nothing to do with the story.
posted by Dennis Murphy at 9:54 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]

I feel unclean just knowing about this.

I'm going to go bleach my anus now.
posted by adamrice at 9:55 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

"It were better for him, that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should scandalize one of these little ones."
posted by resurrexit at 9:56 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

What I find the most annoying about the Shaven Standard (hey, in grown women, that is) is that as a straight man, the moment you find out about the hairless status of your newfound amorata and think "oh God, how unimaginative, I knew it" that's just a bit of a turn-off, and that's exactly the moment you're not supposed to be a bit turned off at all.

And I don't even care that strongly: personally I like it if my paramour leaves a little patch on top, or you know the "landing strip" thing - hell, even a completely untended garden can be beautiful purely for its raw, uncultured, animal attraction. And I don't mind the totally shaven variety either. Of course, women should do with their bodies whatever they please and I really don't care either way - it's just the widespread pubic conformism that I find so trite and saddening.

Did I just type all this out loud?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:57 AM on April 4 [12 favorites]

What psmealey said. The parents I know wouldn't do this sort of thing. There are a few weirdos, though...

I'd add that reports of rampant bikini-waxing for eight year olds sounds like a moral panic. However, as the article reports, it seems more than likely that the 12-and-up set has probably adopted bikini-waxing with a vengeance. Girl, you'll be a woman soon.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:57 AM on April 4

I'm going to go bleach my anus now.

If you must, you must. But please, for the love of God educate yourself about it.
posted by psmealey at 9:57 AM on April 4

Stynxno, go get a bikini wax yourself and then report back if you think it's a good idea for children.

If the point of the article was to discuss how horrifying bikini waxes are then I might agree with you. But they're not. Instead this is just an article that illuminates that there are moms out there with the pagent girl syndrome and how teach a small subset of young girls to act and practices adult behaviors for ridiculous reasons. It's no different than the recent ny times article about girls getting pedicures or about the new "kids only" hair saloon.

Stynxno, I am also outraged by homophobia. I'll let you know when I hit my outrage limit so that you can make sure I've included all the important causes.

Thanks. But this article, and the faux outrage to it, is pretty blah and misdirected. I don't think people are upset about the bikini waxes but more upset about whatever beauty standards that are culturally practiced that they feel are ridiculous or get defensive about. Young girls in this country have nothing on Argentinians or Koreans where plastic surgery for teenage girls is the norm so, yeah, I don't think bikini waxes by neurotic moms is worth my time to get upset about.
posted by Stynxno at 9:58 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

At least they aren't beating them with sticks.
posted by Meatbomb at 10:00 AM on April 4

If girls are not dressing to attract guys - which certainly at that age they are not really - what are they doing it for? Some kind of beauty superiority? If so, I'd rather they not do it. They should be playing sports. Forget plastic surgery. Sports from age 6 up will set a person far further ahead beauty-wise for the rest of their life.
posted by niccolo at 10:01 AM on April 4

Ugh, when I read that article I immediately thought of "Rocky" (the mom on I Know My Kid Is a Star). I worry about the girls growing up now, but most of my friends seem to be erring on the sane side of things.

Still, perfectionism is a form of self-abuse that should not be passed on to children. We're all neurotic enough as it is.
posted by Unicorn on the cob at 10:05 AM on April 4

if so, I'd rather they not do it. They should be playing sports.

Exactly my point: they ARE playing sports. There may be some tiny cohort that is taking this route, going to Barney's and buying Dolce and Gabbana, getting Brazilian waxes, having co-ed sleepovers and snorting methamphetamine off each other, but the vast majority are playing sports, wearing sloppy jeans and baggy sweatshirts, little makeup and generally, just being kids.
posted by psmealey at 10:07 AM on April 4

I don't think people are upset about the bikini waxes but more upset about whatever beauty standards that are culturally practiced that they feel are ridiculous or get defensive about.

No, dude, I am definitely upset about the bikini waxes on EIGHT YEAR OLD GIRLS. The rest of the article, I agree, is the usual blah blah fucked up rich people blah blah crazy beauty culture. The 10% of the article that was about yanking pretend hair from an eight year old vagina really upset me.

And, let me again reassure you that I am aware of the greater universe of human suffering. Can I please stop doing that now? Can we talk about this problem despite the fact that other people are also suffering elsewhere, many in worse ways without getting cited by the outrage police?
posted by prefpara at 10:08 AM on April 4

Where Has All the Pubic Hair Gone?

Where did my lunch go? I was certain I just ate it.

Oh, there it is, on the floor.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:14 AM on April 4 [6 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the recession, rising level of debt, etc, will keep this from becoming too much of an issue.
posted by drezdn at 10:15 AM on April 4

so, to paraphrase...

Motherfilter: damn lawns, get off my kid!
posted by [son] QUAALUDE at 10:17 AM on April 4 [55 favorites]

This is a crappy article. psmealey nails it.

How old could the reporter be? She talks about typing her senior papers on a computer - that puts her around my age at the oldest. And she didn't idolize any pop stars? You could not convince me that she, or at least 90% of her female peers, didn't want to be or pretend to be Madonna in the '80's. And Madonna was a pretty slutty role model.
posted by peep at 10:20 AM on April 4

If girls are not dressing to attract guys - which certainly at that age they are not really - what are they doing it for?

To win their mother's approval.
posted by desjardins at 10:21 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]

I absolutely never thought I would say this but,
please, God, bring back the 70s.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 10:21 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

I'm pretty sure the recession, rising level of debt, etc, will keep this from becoming too much of an issue.

I'm pretty sure that the fact that this is abso-fucking-lutely ree-diculous will keep this from becoming too much of an issue.
posted by lord_wolf at 10:24 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Dear Western culture,

Quit fucking up your kids,

love,
Common Sense

FTFY.
posted by quonsar at 10:26 AM on April 4

Why is it such a concern for people when dickwads act like idiots?

If these parents are so emotionally and ethically crippled that they think encouraging obsessive vanity is a good thing, don't you think they're creative enough to find whole stacks of ways to mess up their kids if we all poo-poo the premature bushwhacking?

These kids are doomed anyway. At least they'll go down with nice skin and shiny hair.
posted by CheeseburgerBrown at 10:28 AM on April 4

"Where has all the pubic hair gone?"
Long time passing...
Where has all the pubic hair gone?
Long time ago...
Where has all the public hair gone?
Shaved or waxed, every one.

Oh when will they ever learn?
Oh when will they... ever learn?!
posted by markkraft at 10:29 AM on April 4 [6 favorites]

If girls are not dressing to attract guys - which certainly at that age they are not really - what are they doing it for? Some kind of beauty superiority?

Attracting boys and being superior aren't necessarily the only motivations. There's peer pressure added into the mix as well.
posted by CKmtl at 10:29 AM on April 4

I believe that this is a positive step forward for the chastity movement. My rationale is as follows: if there is no grass on the infield, when then, would be an appropriate time to play ball? Answer: never.
posted by Flem Snopes at 10:31 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

This is something women do that girls want to do- mom gets her nails done, daughter wants her nails done, mom does her eyebrows, daughters want her eyebrows done. I'm not offended if a mother wants to model or share various methods of self-care to her daughter.

No, as the mother of a now thankfully grownup daughter, neither am I. That's why you let your four year old have an empty lipstick tube in a glamorous sequined evening bag from K-Mart and why you take your 15 year old in for a big fancy makeup session on the morning of her first dance. However, you draw the line somewhere and I think that line is actually quite a ways before you get to bikini waxing. You can explain the bikini wax to your daughter just fine when she actually has hair there and is curious on her own accord which may happen by the time said child is fourteen or thereabouts. Having it done to your eight year old is completely psychotic. For that matter I don't think eight year olds need eyebrow waxing or highlights or deodorant or perfume or nylons or high heels or anything like that at all, by the way, just the occasional bath with some baby shampoo, sneakers, jeans, a T-shirt and a big old chest full of lengths of shiny cloth for costumes if it's raining and a good day to play movie star. Wow, and I thought I was outraged by little girls in high heels and slutty clothes; this is a brand new low.
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:31 AM on April 4 [9 favorites]

If the point of the article was to discuss how horrifying bikini waxes are then I might agree with you. But they're not. Instead this is just an article that illuminates that there are moms out there with the pagent girl syndrome and how teach a small subset of young girls to act and practices adult behaviors for ridiculous reasons. It's no different than the recent ny times article about girls getting pedicures or about the new "kids only" hair saloon.

I am so sick of Stynxno Ring the FA.
posted by Kwantsar at 10:31 AM on April 4

Ah well, you know what they say... there's a lot of ruin in a nation.

You'll know things are *really* going to hell, when moms start getting their daughters their first genital piercing at that age.
posted by markkraft at 10:34 AM on April 4

Or maybe there's, like, two examples of this in the history of the world, from seriously fucked up moms, and it's just been turned into a feature story to get readers? Is that possible?


I'd say probably not, although the bikini wax example is probably rare.

I live in a 'Desperate Housewives/Footballers' Wives' area, where over the past few years all the normal shops (butcher, newsagent, fishmonger, hardware, pet supplies, etc.) have closed and been replaced by exclusive clothes shops, nail bars, beauty salons, designer wedding boutiques, tanning salons, puppy couture wear and recently TWO stores next-door-but-one to each other which sell prom/cruise/evening wear.

Far too many of the girl children (9, 10 years and upwards) in the area wear clothes that are far too adult for them (you know the kind of thing, those horrible shortie t-shirts and low, low-cut pants with glitter slogans written on them like 'Jailbait', 'Superbitch', etc.), high heels, their hair is highlighted, they wear makeup all the time, I've seen them getting acrylic nails as I've walked past the nail bars ...

At fifteen the girls are trying to look 25. Their 40-year-old mothers are trying to look 22. It's all fucked up.

The friend of mine who ran the place where you can paint a pot and have it fired sold the business recently. He told me that when he bought it he thought, in an area where there are lots of families, he'd be busy with children's parties, but the only parties he booked were for the (few) Lubavitch Jewish families in the area, whose children still apparently have a childhood.
posted by essexjan at 10:35 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

The irony is that when I read the article online on the Philadelphia Magazine web site thee was a sidebar ad touting lunchtime-no-surgery face-lifts. So is Philadelphia Magazine gonna stop accepting ads for salons that wax prepubescent girls?
posted by fixedgear at 10:35 AM on April 4

It seems like more than ever television's coverage of young stars and their personal lives has increased. It has also become drastically more critical of small cosmetic flaws.

Another thing I've noticed is that they spend no time talking TO these celebrities, instead, television news (has become nothing but an outrageous tabloid) will only talk about them personally, and rarely about anything they've done professionally.

With this increase in subjected bullshit that the public receives it might provide some insight into why parents and children are both feeling more pressure to add up. It could just be the next evolution in already criminally insane beauty pageant tactics.

transona5, It is frightening to me that this innocent dating game that girls used to do (guys did it too but in different ways, obviously) has turned into a nasty beauty superiority war. When it's no longer a cute way to grab someone else's attention its a bitter and mean spirited way of trying to fill a void that cannot ever be filled, I think.
posted by hellslinger at 10:46 AM on April 4

I'd rather a mother indoctrine their daughter with the concept of bikini waxes than rabid homophobia.

Holy shit, I had no idea that was what was at stake, here. If these pre-pubescent bikini waxes are in some way preventing children from being homophobic, then bring on the bikini waxes!

In the scheme of things, I'm not sure why I should be outraged by this.

Well, the article gives some decent reasons for, if not being outraged, at least thinking it's a bad idea and a sign of horrifically bad parenting. skim through a page or two, see what you think of it.
posted by shmegegge at 10:50 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Philly Magazine usually winds up ironically underlining the grotesquerie of Main Line living by doing appraisals of top titty job doctors and tanning salons, the martini mommy set, and other assorted lifestyle profiles that sex up being a middle aged pillhead shopaholic as much as humanly possible. This article is a little unusual in that it's a pretty literal portrayal of an entire social class of being totally sick and insane. They probably can't run too many more stories like this before the jewelers and Bentley dealers and real estate agents whose ads fund the publication start to get nervous that they're going to bring the whole shit pile crashing down.
posted by The Straightener at 10:51 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

"I'm pretty sure the recession, rising level of debt, etc, will keep this from becoming too much of an issue."

Actually, when the economy tanks, that's when we see an increase in prostitution and some women doing everything they can to attract what they perceive as a meal ticket. They do this because they don't believe they can handle life on their own, and they hold this belief because that's the underlying message you internalize after a lifetime of crap like bikini waxes for 8 year olds. They are groomed to think of themselves as meat: their mothers are complicit, the salons are enablers, and mefis claiming it doesn't matter are minimizers.

Far better to hand these women a brochure for science camp (for their daughters) then Glamour Ghetto magazine.
posted by bravelittletoaster at 10:52 AM on April 4 [9 favorites]

psmealey harrumphed:
"The fact of the matter is that most everyone I know that has young kids, is reasonable, thoughtful, mindful, and has nothing but the best of intentions for their childrens' well-being and emotional growth. It's only OTHER PARENTS that are whoring out their kids, at least as reported by New York Magazine and its ilk.

Seriously, guys. Move along. You're getting played."

AKA "It isn't affecting anyone I personally know, so it's not happening."

Like so much else in the world, it doesn't take personal experience to be concerned about this kind of development. If we don't consider it when it's starting, we won't have time to put a solution or counter-message out as it gains popularity.

These things tend to start small amongst one group of narcissistic idiots and then ripple outward to those who are even more idiotic (i.e., choosing to do these things by spending money they don't really have, which would lead to a compounding of eventual impact on the kids involved), especially when it involves youngsters.

As a society - a whole society, globally connected and intertwined - I think there's a lot of good possible if people would just stand up en masse and say, "that's not okay, I'm not going along with it nor just nodding my head and pretending it's not happening".

Not that anyone's going to do that, but it sure would be good.

At minimum, the salon business as a whole should just put some age limits on things - like tattoo artists - and go from there.

My personal wish would be that parents aren't allowed to indulge in permanent modification or advanced cosmetological procedures until their kids are at least 13, but I know I'm in the minority.
posted by batmonkey at 10:56 AM on April 4

My 14-year-old asked her mother a couple of weeks ago if she can get a Brazilian wax. Our response was not just no, but "FUCK NO ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND HOW IN THE THE HELL DO YOU EVEN KNOW ABOUT THAT?"

You know the old adage about "don't ask the question if you don't want to hear the answer?" Well, we heard the answer to that question: her best friend (13 years old) has been getting Brazilian waxes for a year now - her mom took her as soon as her pubes got dense enough to wax off.

Mrs. Deadmessenger and I then had a long conversation where we considered whether to allow our daughter to be around this kid anymore. In the end, we decided not to do anything, but for a while it could have gone either way.
posted by deadmessenger at 10:57 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]

lol rich people
posted by MillMan at 10:58 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]

also-

which is more traumatic to a high-schooler: obesity or bikini waxing? both are a result of parenting...
posted by [son] QUAALUDE at 10:58 AM on April 4

What they need now are Tramp Stamps. Lucky for them, Toy R Us has them.
posted by FunkyHelix at 10:59 AM on April 4

I tend to agree with those calling BS on this; either that or it is a Pennsylvania thing. I work in a pediatric operating room and at least here in Georgia the girls tend to have the appropriate secondary sex characteristics for their age.
posted by TedW at 11:00 AM on April 4

Really, is it necessary to read past "...we’ve seen a tidal wave of this rising luxury-class culture — you’ve seen it in these pages... "?
psmealy's right on.

In a related story, my tsunami of popularity and charisma and my ascension to the A-List of MetaFilter - as mentioned in many of my comments - continues unabated.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:01 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

On the other hand, I haven't checked but I can imagine the tramp stamps FunkyHelix mentioned are pretty widely available here.
posted by TedW at 11:01 AM on April 4

AKA "It isn't affecting anyone I personally know, so it's not happening."

That's not at all what I said. If you'd actually read and understood my several comments above you'd probably not have misrepresented me so badly.
posted by psmealey at 11:02 AM on April 4

Eight-year-olds, Dude.
posted by isopraxis at 11:02 AM on April 4 [13 favorites]

I'd rather a mother indoctrine their daughter with the concept of rabid homophobia than cannibalism. In the scheme of things, I'm not sure why I should be outraged by this.
posted by EarBucket at 11:06 AM on April 4 [4 favorites]

psmealy, I agree. It seems unlikely that this is anything other than a practice embraced by a small minority of parents in some parts of the country. Nevertheless, it's a practice that I find disturbing. I don't think I would object if it were outlawed. And the fact that most people aren't going to encounter it doesn't mean, to me, that it doesn't matter.
posted by prefpara at 11:07 AM on April 4

It would be so easy for me, a Brit, so say, as would many of my countrymen, "(Some of) you Americans are so fucked up", but I suspect that a story very much like this will be appearing soon in our domestic press.

I despair.
posted by No Mutant Enemy at 11:13 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

I don't think I would object if it were outlawed.

I would object to our lawmakers wasting their time on something so trivial.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 11:13 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Having my wife wax my back hair a couple of days ago was bad enough; its hard to imagine that grown-up women do this sort of thing all the time on more sensitive areas.

The thought of preteen children getting a bikini wax makes me want to start drinking bleach.
posted by mrbill at 11:23 AM on April 4

If this kind of shit is going down in Philadelphia, imagine what they're doing in LA...
posted by VicNebulous at 11:25 AM on April 4

transona5, It is frightening to me that this innocent dating game that girls used to do (guys did it too but in different ways, obviously) has turned into a nasty beauty superiority war.

I agree, but the main problem I have with these kinds of articles is that the focus tends to be on the "narcissism" of the girls -- the problem isn't that girls and women are judged for their looks rather than their talents or character, but that the losers by this metric aren't content with their station in life and insist on trying to compete with their betters.
posted by transona5 at 11:26 AM on April 4

Philly Mag is not an authority for much of anything.

Just putting it out there.
posted by supercres at 11:29 AM on April 4

Eight year olds, Dude.
posted by Roman Graves at 11:30 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

"Some guys shave it up, and the woman won't reciprocate. Then, when they have sex, it looks like Castro smoking a cigar" - Bob Saget
posted by porn in the woods at 11:30 AM on April 4 [5 favorites]

I would object to our lawmakers wasting their time on something so trivial.

As long as the style media push salacious little bits like this out there, inciting the masses to clamor that the fashion and beauty industries are turning our precious little angels into street whores and we're powerless to have any influence over our own children's fashion decisions, you can bet your ass that someone in Congress will introduce such a bill. It's a certainty.

But back to this...

As a society - a whole society, globally connected and intertwined - I think there's a lot of good possible if people would just stand up en masse and say, "that's not okay, I'm not going along with it nor just nodding my head and pretending it's not happening"... Not that anyone's going to do that, but it sure would be good..

Seems like that kind of thing, while honorably and rightly utopian, could be just as much a force for bad as it would be for good. Who's to say what's universally, a priori, good or bad? You? Me? What you suggest is mob rule wrapped up in an idealistic bow. But I digress.

Reasonable people still do have the good sense not to engage (and not to permit their children to engage) is this type of ridiculousness. They bring their kids up well, and are careful to guard against destructive behaviors that injure their children's self-esteem, trigger body image issues, or cause them to be anti-social, hyper-competitive twerps in their adolescence.

Are there shitty parents out there that constantly give into the social pressure (whether real or imaginged) to give their children $50,000 sweet sixteen parties, and think it's cute when their kids wear to school, clothing that's most appropriate for the nightclub? Is this the bane of the society, will it trigger our collapse, are they sapping our precious bodily fluids?

I don't think so. It's a handful of people with really bad taste. And last I checked, people were still free to have bad taste. Let's not overreact.
posted by psmealey at 11:36 AM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Or maybe there's, like, two examples of this in the history of the world, from seriously fucked up moms, and it's just been turned into a feature story to get readers? Is that possible?

That's what I'm thinking.


From the article:

“I’ve actually been joking that I’m going to write a book called Where Has All the Pubic Hair Gone?” Janice Hillman, a doctor in the Penn Health System at Radnor who specializes in adolescent medicine, tells me. “It’s such a rarity to find it these days in 10- and 12-year-old girls, and older girls. I need to check for it at that age — it’s an indicator of puberty and development, how much there is, where it’s growing. And now, I need to ask girls, if it’s not there, ‘Do you wax? Do you shave?’ Because so many of them do.”

posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:36 AM on April 4

She beat Britney to it
posted by CeruleanZero at 12:09 PM on April 4

Actually, this is as logical as it is revolting.

Current 'grooming' norms -- no pubic hair, no real breasts, no fatty deposits of any kind, and absolutely no wattles, wrinkles or gray strands -- are designed to make all adult women look like 9 year olds with a boob job. So if you give a 9 year old a wax and a boob job, you have the ideal woman.

I might as well give up: I have tits, I have thighs, and I still have pubic hair. I'm sure the Vile Old Hag Disposal Team will roll up to the door forthwith.
posted by jrochest at 12:20 PM on April 4 [4 favorites]

My personal wish would be that parents aren't allowed to indulge in permanent modification or advanced cosmetological procedures until their kids are at least 13 ...

Hello, circumcision!

The guy with the red Honda on Fulton St. (you know, the one with the Mohel = Mengele bumper sticker (among hundreds)) would agree with you.

I see lots of little babies with pierced ears. Like *babies,* man, less then a year old. Whoa! I guess their parents want to make sure people know that they are girls.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:21 PM on April 4

Metafilter: where all the pubic hair has gone.
posted by toastchee at 12:30 PM on April 4

Today, my girlfriends and I laugh when someone busts out evidence of “the ugly years” — the pictures from school dances, or those heinous school portraits from the fourth to ninth grades. They’re awesome. They make us feel better about how we look today.

This graph stood out for me as utter bullshit. If the author enjoys looking at pictures from the "ugly years," I don't think those years were so ugly. I wasn't nearly as bad as other friends, but I don't look back fondly at pictures from bad-looking years.

No mom wants her unibrowed nine-year-old getting teased at school, or a 13-year-old suffering the angst of bad acne when a solution is at hand.

I think back to junior high, and the girls that were mercilessly destroyed by classmates (and it was always girls who were destroyed) were those who looked "ugly" by prevailing standards. Those standards haven't changed much.

What I'm saying is that your lack of a bikini wax will not lose you friends, nor will it prevent you from educational opportunities. Bad acne, unibrows, bad posture, etc. can definitely do both at puberty age, i.e. outcast becomes shy, non-participatory, etc. It's sad.

So if this new "trend" keeps improves the self-esteem of "ugly" girls and gets them more involved socially and educationally, I can see it as no more evil than any other part of the "beauty" industry.

NB, of course, these thoughts all come from a distant observer. I can't say it's not a good experience for mother-daughter bonding, for I am neither. I do remove hair from various parts of my body, mostly head, face, neck and nostrils. I also occasionally grab a fistful of (thin) hair from my back to extract. ;)

If there's no hair, can you even wax it?

I don't think anyone answered dabitch: Of course you can. You just won't pull up any hair. I'm not sure how it affects healthy follicle formation/growth.
posted by mrgrimm at 12:36 PM on April 4

I'm a cosmetologist and would not ever wax or perform a chemical service on a child under the age of sixteen without her parent's verbal permission. This whole article made me dry heave.

Also, this is not entirely related, and I'm sure it's TMI, but at my last annual checkup, my (female) gyno looked up from between my legs to comment, "you know, it's so refreshing to see a woman with pubic hair these days." That's just sad, man.
posted by tits mcgee at 12:37 PM on April 4 [7 favorites]

tits mcgee, you wrote, "I'm a cosmetologist and would not ever wax or perform a chemical service on a child under the age of sixteen without her parent's verbal permission."

If you had a parent's verbal permission, would you do a bikini wax on a child under the age of sixteen?
posted by prefpara at 12:42 PM on April 4

Why is this surprising? Kids want to do what their parents do, whether their non-conformist little souls acknowledge it or not. Parents smoke, kids smoke. Parents are lushes, kids are lushes. Mom is a hoebag who pops out three kids before she is 18, the odds are the daughter will be a similar hoebag. Dad beats mom, son eventually beats his wife. Mom thinks pubic hair is bad, daughter thinks pubic hair is bad.

I'm especially fond of cunnilingus. I prefer it to any other sexual activity. If I had to give up vaginal penetration or cunnilingus, goodbye penetration. This means that in the approximately 30 years that I've been sexually active, I've inspected a lot of vaginas. Every year, the quantity of pubic hair has diminished. Virtually all women used to have hairy vaginas. Occasionally I would ingest a pubic hair. No problem. I wasn't going to develop hairballs. But then porn became more accessible, and depilation became de rigueur in the porn world, and masturbatory boyfriends became husbands who had acclimated themselves to shaven vaginas, so the wive's obliged. Now the 17-year old girl sitting beside you at church on Sunday probably shaves her vagina. She might even be a virgin, with a vagina uninspected by anyone except possibly her doctor, but shaving is now something that teenage girls do, courtesy of their masturbatory fathers.
posted by Chasuk at 12:42 PM on April 4 [4 favorites]

I see lots of little babies with pierced ears. Like *babies,* man, less then a year old. Whoa!

Yeah, seriously. What is UP? When I did a foreign exchange program in France in the late 80s, I saw a baby adorned in that way and remarked on it. My host family dad (a homeopathic pharmacist by profession), told me that piercing babies' ears prevented them from having a lazy eye (as it kept both their eyes fixed forward). I thought he was fucking nuts.

At any rate, I hadn't thought of that for a long time since, until a couple of years ago when I actually saw a number of babies in various parts of the US with pierced ears.

Weird. I mean it's not nearly as egregious as, say, ritual female circumcision, but all you can do is look and ask "why?", just "why?"
posted by psmealey at 12:46 PM on April 4

Chasuk: "Why is this surprising? Kids want to do what their parents do, whether their non-conformist little souls acknowledge it or not. "

How the hell does the girl know that her mom is getting bikini waxes, anyway? These families are very different from mine.

(I've said it before, I'll say it again. Vulva! Vulva! Vulva! Not vagina. Hairy vaginas need doctors, not waxers.)
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:59 PM on April 4 [8 favorites]

If the author enjoys looking at pictures from the "ugly years," I don't think those years were so ugly.

Retouching Grade-School Pix.

Teens Retouched by Photographic Angels.
posted by ericb at 1:07 PM on April 4

How the hell does the girl know that her mom is getting bikini waxes, anyway?

Perhaps they've seen their mothers naked? I don't think that's a horrible thing. When did Americans become such prudes about seeing each other naked?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:13 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

I can't believe it was 18 years ago already, in April of 1990 that I underwent a little genital-area risk taking of my own and had a vasectomy.
And now, I am SO SO grateful that the issue of how the world does sick and weird things to little girls is at least a little bit abstract to me.
As long as I don't think too much about my nieces...
posted by arcadia at 1:21 PM on April 4

This is an interesting article, although I'm not sure how widespread the problem is. Part of me wants to believe it can't possibly be that pervasive, that it's just a couple of rich moms, but then I never thought anything like that Super Sweet 16 show really happens. But regardless, it's damaging enough to have it happen to one young girl.

One thing the article didn't mention that I think is more harmful than the distorted physical self-image is that girls like that are not taken seriously. Having gone through a phase where I went through the same motions as these girls, I found that people assuming I'm a frivolous idiot is more damaging to my self-worth than people thinking I'm not pretty enough. Let me explain, and please forgive the impromptu essay...

Until I went to college, my mother did not allow me to wear make-up. I could wear nail polish, but I couldn't wear red nail polish, even. In middle school, this irked me. By high school I didn't much care anymore. I didn't keep up with fashion or anything either. I was happy and even popular, and people took me seriously. There were certainly those who judged me for not looking "hot," and sometimes I felt self-conscious about it. Mostly, though, I was confident and knew those people were shallow idiots I didn't want to be friends with. The first time I ever got "dolled up" at all was for prom; people were shocked by how good I can look with that kind of effort. I'm convinced that's the case for most seemingly average or unattractive people.

Anyway, the real story begins after high school ends. My boyfriend of two and a half years breaks up with me. I get depressed and find it very difficult to handle the break-up. College starts and I decide I'll bother to wear "cute" clothes, I'll do my hair, wear make-up, wax what I'm supposed to, get manicures, etc. And when I say make-up, I mean the whole shebang: concealer, foundation, blush, eyeshadow, mascara, lipstick. I'm not sure that I actually want another boyfriend so soon, but I figure it will help me get over my ex to at least know that I could get another boyfriend.

I look pretty good; I get whistles and cat-calls and cars honking when I walk down the street, even. Guy friends tell me their other friends said I'm pretty. People I've known since high school are happy for me.

It's all an ego boost, certainly, but a rather empty one. It doesn't compare to the kinds of compliments I would get in high school about my personality or character; that sort of thing actually warmed me and made me feel good about myself and how I connect with other people. I feel like most people would look just as good if they put effort into it -- that's all I had to do -- and the ones who still wouldn't look good shouldn't be judged by the luck of the genetic draw. Furthermore, it's an expensive effort I could only afford because I got a job; growing up with little money made me sympathetic to people who really can't afford to do it.

Yet somehow, it doesn't occur to ask myself, "So why am I bothering?" I figure there's no harm in taking pride in your appearance.

There isn't any harm, to a great extent. But I begin to find out that the amount of effort I was putting into my appearance was transparent -- it takes a certain amount of time and effort to do all that make-up, get manicures, etc -- and it's giving people the wrong impression of the things I find important. I get attention from guys, but the guys don't even know me. I come to realize that their demeanor belies the idea that they don't think I could possibly have anything of substance to say... and more importantly, my appearance has given them this impression. It's not as simple as "guys don't take attractive girls seriously;" merely being attractive isn't the cause, I don't think. When it's obvious you've spent a lot of time on your appearance they assume you place an inordinate amount of value on shallow things. As much as they appreciate the physical product of that effort, they still judge you as a frivolous person.

Most of the guys are douche bags, but a lot of them are sincerely nice guys who just can't shake their subconscious assumption about me. I get tired of being talked-down to, and because they don't engage me on any meaningful level I don't find them appealing no matter how "hot" they are. (A lot of my crushes have been on traditionally "ugly" guys. For whatever reason, I'm not a very visual person.) What's worse is guys who value personality more than appearance -- in other words, the kind of guy I would want to date -- just write me off when they've barely spoken to me. They don't need to get to know me, after all; anyone who spends that much time on her make-up isn't someone they'd be interested in.

On top of it, some girls will just glare me when I don't even know them. Friends of friends sometimes won't even give me a chance and dislike me before I've spoken to them. This upsets me because some of these girls seem like people I would be friends with if circumstances were different, mostly because they seem smart. The first assumption here might be jealousy, but I don't think that was usually the case. More often than not, I think it is a snap-judgment telling them that I value things they find stupid. More than that, they assume that if I value those things then I must already think ill of them for not being more attractive. They don't have to be self-conscious to feel this way, I don't think.

Regardless, I don't talk about appearance or make-up or clothes, so this strikes me as unfair on their part. I tell myself that I don't want to be friends with someone who would dismiss me out of jealousy or a snap-judgment, and I suppose that still holds true. Snap-judgments, though, are hard to prevent, and I have trouble holding this against them; when I run into girls who seem to put hours into their appearance every day, don't I think the same thing?

So after all this effort, who do I end up dating? A guy I worked on debate files with in high school, who had a small crush on me before all the tarting up. He treats me the same as he ever did. He doesn't complain about my appearance, certainly, but it is ultimately irrelevant. (It's nearly six years later now, and we're engaged.)

Once I have him, the contrast between him and the guys who hit on me grows. It finally gets to be terribly annoying to be hit on. Usually the guys are nice and it's only irritating as an unwanted intrusion -- I don't take it out on them and politely decline. But the guys that talk down to me while doing it make me want to scratch their eyes out. It becomes more and more offensive to me, and harder and harder to remind myself to be polite because they don't realize they're doing it.

Furthermore, people who don't know me still assume I have no substance, and I have to do a lot of work to disavow them of that notion. I never had to do that before, and it frustrates me.

Gradually I wonder why I'm still wearing all the make-up and getting all the manicures and waxes when it annoys me and eats up money. I knew that I started doing it so I would have reminders that I'm desirable, but my boyfriend thinks that even without the make-up, and that kind of shallow desirability isn't even something I value.

I start to look in the mirror after I put on all my make-up, and I consider my reflection. I begin to think that it looks nothing like how I feel as a person. The person in the mirror is overtly girly, by which I mean more to convey immaturity than femininity. I start to see what other people see, that the make-up does imply values. Something about that volume of it tends to wipe the intelligence from the eyes and replace it with an agreeable, but vacant look. Physically I know it can't do that. I think that deep down, I must feel the same as everyone else: putting this degree of effort into one's appearance is a stupid thing to do. It's all too easy to make the jump to "someone who does such a thing must then be stupid." It's certainly pretty, and a little voice tells me I'm supposed to like it, but I just... don't. You wouldn't know by looking at this girl that she cares about anything important at all.

One day I sleep too late to get out of bed and devote the requisite hour to getting ready. For the first time in two years, I leave my dorm without make-up. I feel awkward about it at first, but it's nice to sleep an hour later -- more make-up free days come to pass. Gradually, the days I wear make-up become the minority. And when I look in the mirror on those days, the girl staring back at me wrinkles her nose and looks like she doesn't want to be there.

On the days I have time, I start looking at the mirror right after I get out of the shower. That feels better. There is nothing there that gives a false impression of me. For some reason, though, I dredge on with the make-up and it feels wrong again. I feel conflicted, disoriented. What am I going to do though, wash it off? I leave my room and go about my day.

But one day I get out of the shower, look in the mirror, and things go differently. I know I have time to do my make-up. I even reach for it, but I stop. I wonder what I'm doing. I go over all the negatives in my mind. When I review the positives, they just sound stupid. And then I think, You know what? Fuck it.

Somehow, even though I didn't truly value appearances, I came to wear the make-up just because society told me I was supposed to want to. That realization was one of the weirdest feelings I've ever had; you think if you have your priorities in order, you're immune to that sort of thing. The best thing I can compare it to is a superstition. I didn't actually care much what I looked like, even knew that I felt better without the make-up, but somewhere in me I had the idea that Something Bad would happen if I stopped wearing it.

That's when I came full circle. I realized that it's more effective to change the impression I give people than to be angry that they have the impression. My solution was to quit wearing as much make-up, and it worked well. I wear light foundation and a natural blush now and that's it. I wear the foundation because my complexion can get bad during certain points in my cycle, and it's distracting enough to make me self-conscious. Then I wear the blush -- and barely any of it -- just to make up for the foundation giving my face a single color. One of my guy friends thought I don't wear make-up at all, which pleases me. I don't bother spending money on manicures, which just made it more difficult to type anyway. This is all much less work and I don't look unnatural. More importantly, it doesn't give people the impression that I spend a lot of time thinking about my appearance. I take pride in it, but there are better ways to spend an hour a day.

The difference in how I'm perceived is huge. I still get hit on sometimes, but no one talks down to me. Girls don't hate me for no reason, and people in general don't seem to think I'm a "silly bitch" anymore. If I say something about a topic, I don't get looks of veiled incredulity from people who are looking for the smallest hint that, even though I sound legit, I may not actually know what I'm talking about.

I'm not saying it's fair that people see an attractive person and assume he/she has no other concerns, but it's what happens. It's unfortunately true of enough women that I can't blame others for having that impression. Plus, I don't disagree with the general premise of the judgment -- that appearance should not matter more than other things -- only that people are prematurely judged as caring only about appearance. I think for a lot of people, it becomes the sort of superstitious thing I've described. But the bottom line is, like it or not, if you signal to other people that superficial concerns occupy a large amount of your time, they will tend to think you are shallow and you will have to fight that perception.

So, from someone who's been there and back again, I worry less that these young girls will have body image issues than they'll find that the things their mothers have taught them to value will cause others to think less of them, not more. I had the benefit of being forced to accept early on that I would have to value things other than appearance; it was either that or have no self-confidence. When I did the "pretty" thing, my core values were still the same and it was easy to realize that compliments of my appearance were empty. I knew that what was making me upset was that people didn't value me anymore, because I remembered a time where people definitely valued me and not merely my appearance.

These girls' only experience of being valued, though, might only be for their appearance -- even by their mothers! -- and they will just feel confused and lost when being pretty doesn't make everyone like them. It will be harder for them to put their finger on what they're missing because they've never had it. They will either dismiss others' ire as jealousy -- which is sometimes true, but often not -- or think they still aren't pretty enough for that person to like them. They won't easily realize that others find their values silly or even appalling, and furthermore, that maybe those people have a point. That makes me very sad.

I think one of the best things a parent can do is let their child become accustomed to looking average. They may think they're helping their daughter's self-esteem with all these silly procedures, but that's only, well, superficially true.
posted by Nattie at 1:23 PM on April 4 [55 favorites]

Pennsylvania already regulates cosmetologists down to the level of the number of combs they must have on hand (twelve). Most states have a pretty well-established body of regulations governing the vocations, from barbers to funeral directors to veterinarians. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch from this to establish a minimum age for a wax.
posted by A Long and Troublesome Lameness at 1:33 PM on April 4

I don't think the 8 year old would wonder what happened to her mom's pubic hair. The article doesn't make it seem like these girls are running around making their parents get them waxes. it sounds like the parents are insisting on it.
posted by shmegegge at 1:35 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

excuse me, that was in response to this.

Perhaps they've seen their mothers naked? I don't think that's a horrible thing. When did Americans become such prudes about seeing each other naked?
posted by shmegegge at 1:37 PM on April 4

You know, with all the talk in the tabloid rags about Britney Spears and her embarrassing lifestyle choices, I haven't once seen someone point the finger at our culture's increasing sexualization of young girls. Because, you know, it's just *preposterous* to think that tarting up a young teenage girl, putting her in a little Catholic schoolgirl outfit, and having her sing "hit me baby one more time" could possibly mess with her head.
posted by Afroblanco at 1:39 PM on April 4

our culture's increasing sexualization of young girls...

Oh, how I love this scene from the film Little Miss Sunshine. [5:14]
posted by ericb at 1:42 PM on April 4

There could be some weird, counter-intuitive consequences from all this, it occurs to me.

As far as I have heard, most biologists continue to believe that menstruating human females who spend a lot of time together tend to synchronize their periods, presumably by the agency of pheromones. These pheromones are thought to be produced by the actions of bacteria on secretions in the underarm and genital regions. Shaving these areas and keeping them shaven could be expected to drastically reduce the habitat for these bacteria, as well as reducing the surface area from which pheromones could be produced and released and the elevated temperature which would would aid volatilization of the pheromones that are produced.

So if everyone shaves, there may be less menstrual synchrony.

But even more important (in a modern context), there may be less of a collective effect pushing everyone in a close knit group into development of pubic hair and menarche as the first few reach it (the little sister effect, if you will).

Encouraging your prepubescent daughter to shave and wax her body entirely could, therefore, paradoxically become a means of keeping her prepubescent longer than she otherwise would be-- but only if it becomes a fashion almost universally adopted by the other girls and women she is close to.


posted by jamjam at 1:44 PM on April 4 [3 favorites]

Well, the article gives some decent reasons for, if not being outraged, at least thinking it's a bad idea and a sign of horrifically bad parenting. skim through a page or two, see what you think of it.

No, it really doesn't. There is nothing in the article is all that interesting or enlightening. Sex and the City did an episode about this 5 years ago where all the women were happy that they had a "real childhood". When I first saw that, I thought it was ridiculous and in the last few years, this article confirms that it's ridiculous too. There is nothing to be outraged because it's merely an article about how one woman was shocked that their are moms out there who dress up their young daughters. Guess what? Girls across the country still do all the things they did fifteen years ago - it is just a small subset of the rich and wealthy that still practice behaviors that every generation has viewed as "too adult" and "too luxurious".

The author of this article puts too much faith in her own experience as being the way childhood should be. She generalizes in stupid statements about her "ugly years" and beliving it forced her to "accept herself". It is bogus and her statements about "good moms" and "bonding" are misguided and ridiculous as well. For every mother who is taking their daughter for a bikini wax, there is another mother who is taking her daughter to mcdonalds for the 4th time that week and lettering her get fatter. Both are examples of bad parenting and establishing lasting habits that could cause their daughter health/body/whatever issues later. Both instances, to me, come from the same place and deserve the same amount of outrage.
posted by Stynxno at 1:47 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Er, to correct an error that completely changes the meaning of what I was saying: *their demeanor belies the idea that they think I could have anything of substance to say.
posted by Nattie at 1:50 PM on April 4

I think one of the best things a parent can do is let their child become accustomed to looking average.

Oh good God no.
posted by Stynxno at 1:52 PM on April 4

so hang on a second. when I said the article gives decent reasons to think that this is a sign of bad parenting, your response is "No, it really doesn't." Then you say:

For every mother who is taking their daughter for a bikini wax, there is another mother who is taking her daughter to mcdonalds for the 4th time that week and lettering her get fatter. Both are examples of bad parenting and establishing lasting habits that could cause their daughter health/body/whatever issues later.

So if it IS bad parenting, what is it about the article that doesn't make it seem like bad parenting? you're not being consistent. is your entire point that people shouldn't get upset about this because there are other things to get upset about? because otherwise I'm forced to try to piece together your ultimate point by reading the subtext, and the only thing I can gather from that is that you seem to believe that young girls should be raised to embrace the ideal of beauty generated by advertising and to think of themselves as needing bikini waxes and makeovers in order to be beautiful. Those two ideas are not consistent with one another and I'd like to think that you don't believe the latter, so I'm confused.

do you think it's bad parenting? do you think the article makes it seem like bad parenting? do you have a problem with people in this thread talking about how they think it's bad parenting? what on earth are you trying to say?
posted by shmegegge at 2:03 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

I think one of the best things a parent can do is let their child become accustomed to looking average.

Oh good God no.

Yes, horror! Raising children who don't believe they have to look airbrushed! That would indeed be terrible, and I hope God prevents it. I pray that my little girls will be 30% silicone and 100% bald down there. I plan to tell them every day that I will only love them if they're prettier than (vomit) a v e r a g e. I sleep better at night knowing that many a v e r a g e looking people will never become accustomed to their nasty, filthy bodies and faces.

I dunno, am I reading to much into your comments because I'm responding to this thread with strong emotion, or are you actually saying things that are crazy?
posted by prefpara at 2:07 PM on April 4 [2 favorites]

Stynxno said: "Oh good God no."

What is wrong with looking average? Notice I didn't say "ugly." Part of the problem is that people think being average isn't enough, if they're not smoking hot they're not anything, and that's the message the mothers are giving their daughters. If a kid is sincerely "ugly" in some way that's abnormal and distracting, I don't see the problem in addressing it. For example, while I think it's premature for a 16-year-old to get breast implants -- I was naturally flat until I was 20 -- it doesn't bother me to see a 16-year-old get a single breast implant because one is just obviously and embarrassingly larger than the other. There's nothing wrong with treating acne, or wearing make-up to cover a distractingly unattractive complexion. It doesn't teach them ridiculous standards of beauty and that appearance is all that's important.

I think you'll agree that's not at all what the article was about, though. There's no reason whatsoever for a 12-year-old to get a bikini wax, and getting your 5-year-old daughter a lighter shade of hair is not addressing a source of crippling self-esteem.
posted by Nattie at 2:11 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

do you think it's bad parenting? do you think the article makes it seem like bad parenting? do you have a problem with people in this thread talking about how they think it's bad parenting? what on earth are you trying to say?

Oh, it's bad parenting. But bad parenting, in this way, is going to make me rage. I was responding, in general, to that idea (and trying to stay away from the idiots who wanted to talk waxing pubes in general). It's a matter of degree. I'm not outraged that parents are doing this and don't see it as a OMG I'M GLAD I'LL NEVER HAVE KIDS kind of way.

I dunno, am I reading to much into your comments because I'm responding to this thread with strong emotion, or are you actually saying things that are crazy?

You're reading too much into it. Have you seen average fashion? It's utter crap. Where you're focusing on plastic surgery and plastic boobs, I was thinking of the whole individual. I'm also a fan of the show What Not To Wear which shows how above average a person can look while understanding concepts such as fit, form, makeup, hair styles, etc. Teaching a kid to be average, to me, is the same as teaching a kid not to care and not to provide them with any kind of tools that would be helpful for them. Why not teach your kids what fit mean and what it means to dress their body? Do that and your kids no longer will be "average".
posted by Stynxno at 2:17 PM on April 4

is going to make me rage

ISN'T going to make me rage.
posted by Stynxno at 2:22 PM on April 4

I'm also a fan of the show What Not To Wear which shows how above average a person can look while understanding concepts such as fit, form, makeup, hair styles, etc.

I'm in love with Stynxno.
posted by pieoverdone at 2:22 PM on April 4

Stynxno, I feel like we're not speaking the same language. I think this is a bit of a "two ships passing in the night" situation.

You really want to talk about how bad things are in general, and you insist that this example in particular is not significantly worse than everything else. I disagree, and feel that this example is in fact worse than what goes on in general, in part because none of the other examples you name (e.g. "average fashion") don't involve needless and intense physical pain. We've both stated and restated our positions several times, and it doesn't sound like either of us is succeeding in convincing the other, so this seems to be an area where we are likely to continue to disagree. Oh well.

I do want to mention a place where I think you read something that wasn't there:

Teaching a kid to be average, to me, is the same as teaching a kid not to care...

I don't think this is the idea that Nette and I were expressing. I won't speak for her (she is clearly more than capable of doing it herself), but what I was expressing far less eloquently is that in our society, girls (in general) are not happy with their bodies and faces even when they look FINE and even GOOD. Our society has redefined beauty in an unhealthy way. Therefore, it would be really great if parents could teach their children to be happy with and accepting of their physical selves. This is not the same as saying, screw it, just wear a potato sack and the BO that God gave you.
posted by prefpara at 2:32 PM on April 4 [6 favorites]

psmealey huffed:
"That's not at all what I said. If you'd actually read and understood my several comments above you'd probably not have misrepresented me so badly."

Try decaf. I hear it helps cure bad cases of the Grumps.
posted by batmonkey at 2:33 PM on April 4

I'm gonna get flamed for this, but the waxing thing doesn't bother me.

This is exactly the kind of thing that, unless I had been given some experience with it as a child, I would be nervous about later in life, avoid it, and become neurotic about it from all the media portraying it as all but mandatory, and just be miserable about it. Whereas things that were demystified early even when I wanted to be anywhere but there at the time, I'm comfortable with and confident about and can choose whatever suits me regardless of what the media says, and consider to be examples of good parenting. So I file this under providing a broad education, which to me is a good thing. (Also, I'd assume the pain comes largely from the hair being pulled out, so no hair no harm no foul)

What bothers me is if the mothers are teaching their daughters that they'll never be loved unless they do this every month for the rest of their lives. That's a separate issue, and may well be present.
posted by -harlequin- at 2:40 PM on April 4

It's a matter of degree. I'm not outraged that parents are doing this and don't see it as a OMG I'M GLAD I'LL NEVER HAVE KIDS kind of way.

Eh, your outrage is obviously yours to spend where you wish. I think the only place I really disagree is that (I think) you're saying that 8 year olds are demanding bikini waxes, and I'm getting the impression the PARENTS are insisting on them for kids who wouldn't have asked for them, because they couldn't possibly know what one is since they don't have pubic hair and at that age aren't likely to be aware enough of their bodies and sexuality to understand the term if they heard it. Where I get a little bit ouraged, and just a little bit, is the idea that moms are dragging these girls out and saying "go through this pain that you don't understand so that you can be beautiful. you being beautiful means having someone hurt your genitals for no god damn reason."

but that's my take on it.
posted by shmegegge at 2:41 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

although, if there are 8 year olds asking for it first and the parents are going along with it instead of sitting them down for a talk then I'm also inclined to see that as bad parenting.
posted by shmegegge at 2:43 PM on April 4

Nattie wrote:

When it's obvious you've spent a lot of time on your appearance they assume you place an inordinate amount of value on shallow things.

I confess, when I meet a girl who looks like a Paris Hilton tart, I assume that she is shallow. Usually, if I get to know the girl, I discover that I needn't have bothered -- my first impression was correct. Occasionally, I'm startled when she has depth, but not often enough that I stop myself from reacting to the stereotype.
posted by Chasuk at 2:45 PM on April 4

Usually, if I get to know the girl, I discover that I needn't have bothered -- my first impression was correct.

Any chance you could crawl back under whatever rock you came from? Both of your comments in this thread are simply frightening.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 2:51 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

psmealey considered:

Thanks, monkeybat. I'll give it a try. I was going to suggest a little something to you to help you communicate like an adult, but I'm afraid it doesn't exist. It is just going to take a little bit of time.
posted by psmealey at 3:00 PM on April 4

If you can convince me that either of my comments were frightening (simply or even unreservedly), I'll keep your request in mind.
posted by Chasuk at 3:03 PM on April 4

These girls' only experience of being valued, though, might only be for their appearance -- even by their mothers! -- and they will just feel confused and lost when being pretty doesn't make everyone like them.

In addition, I think they would find it particularly devastating when their looks start to fade. If that is the only thing they get their self-respect from, it's just going to destroy them when they inevitably age. Not to mention how common it is for people to put on some pounds once their youthful metabolism starts to slow down.
posted by marble at 3:04 PM on April 4 [1 favorite]

Remember that crank from a couple weeks back who said what we really need in this country is a reprise of the Great Depression? Sometimes I think he has a point.

If we have another Depression, these crazy, too-much-money-not-enough-sense moms will still force this on their daughters, but the stylists will all have Ph.D.s.
posted by oaf at 3:06 PM on April 4

The corpse in the library: (I've said it before, I'll say it again. Vulva! Vulva! Vulva! Not vagina. Hairy vaginas need doctors, not waxers.)

I was totally going to say that exact thing. Pet peeve of mine.
posted by peep at 3:10 PM on April 4

I'm especially fond of cunnilingus.

No one fucking cares.

The entire paragraph that follows that statement is poorly worded and really not fit for the mixed company of strangers. While I get your point, I just. don't. care. about your sexual history or even the vaguest of details of the acts you done.

Jesus man.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:10 PM on April 4 [8 favorites]