If you aren’t yet signed up to the excellent Any-Body page on Facebook you may have missed the less than delightful story about bikini waxing for young girls.
In 10 years, waxing children will be like taking them to the dentist or putting braces on their teeth.
According to one New York waxing practitioner.
The story was originally broken by MSNBC and uncovered a growing trend across the United States of mothers booking their pre-pubescent girls in for bikini waxing.
One New York City salon, Wanda’s European Skin Care Center, boasts on its Web site that children 8 years and older can get discounted waxing for “virgin” hair. “Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing … and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!” the salon proclaims.
It is true that many girls in the western world are starting puberty much younger. It is not uncommon for some to start periods aged 9 or 10. Some of the reasoning for this drastic hair removing practice goes that the girl wants to fit in with her peers and can’t have unsightly hair sprouting between her legs.
Much of the true pressure seems to come from mothers who dream of a future as a supermodel for their little girls. Little girls as young as 6 have been brought for waxing because their mothers feel embarrassed about the amount of hair they have on their bodies.
“Girls are learning the worst possible lessons about body image and body hair,” said Dr. Diane Levin, professor of education at Wheelock College in Boston and co-author of the book “So Sexy So Soon.” “Keep your bodies like little girls’ because that’s what men like.”
While Dr Levin has a point, her theory that this is what men like doesn’t completely hold firm with the direct action of the mothers.
Why would women in one of the most equal areas of the world choose to adhere to such a warped approach to womanhood? Are these child waxing mothers under the thumb of a perverted male orientated culture that insists on hair stripped girls and women?
I can see the male pressures but in such a free society why are women choosing extreme conformity and normalisation of this oppressive fetish? Is the highly feminised cult of beauty to blame and if so could this be coming about more as a commercial pressure than a directly masculine one?
These mothers are the generation whose own mothers fought for equal pay and equal rights. How have we, as a gender, slipped so far back in one generation?
This is an extremely disturbing story. I can’t believe that mothers would do this to their children. It’s up there with padded bikinis and “sexy” underwear for kids under 12. It’s up there with platforms, sequins, handbags, make up and nail bars for tweenagers. It’s up there with Molly rae’s line of provocative clothing for what essentially are children. When are children going to be allowed to be just that?
That’s just wrong, on several levels just wrong.
This is sickening. It’s bad enough that grown women feel pressurised to remove all their body hair because it’s supposedly what men want (really?) without forcing it on their daughters as well. What’s next, a little surgery to ‘tidy up’ the labia before the first date?
Why does everyone try to blame the act of a woman removing her pubic hair on the wishes of men? Does anyone ever think, maybe the woman just doesn’t enjoy having pubic hair? I sure don’t! I don’t like pubic hair on men, either. I don’t think anyone enjoys getting hair in their mouth, whether they prefer going down on men or women. *pukes*
The belief that body hair is unattractive or inconvenient is Anglo-American in origin. An attractive French or Italian girl thinks nothing of it, au naturel is best; while a beauty contest for young children is an odious American obsession derided elsewhere.
I notice that many of the anti examples of prejudice against women quoted by contributors, true enough within the terms used, stem from popular culture. The examples drawn upon come largely from film and television. Certain conventions are commonplace in popular culture paid for advertising or by bums on seats: shock your reader, entertain, earn big bucks or you are out.
This puzzles me for it is obvious also that contributors read widely and write well. What is life after all but books? The world is full of the most marvellous human stories and there is not enough time or will to become acquainted with them.
I would like to make a suggestion. Is there a case, for example, for concentrating on real ignominy and cultural cruelty to young children? In Britain an unknown number of young girls, probably thousands, are spirited away to relatives in Pakistan and other Asian countries and forced into arranged marriages. To serve them up to men they have been circumcised by elders sent over to Britain. A recent study revealed that 90 of these elders were operating in London alone. If women are to be taken seriously in their self-appointed role of victims of men, is it not desirable to deal with cruelty and abuse as a human condition. A recent study of domestic abuse showed that 40 per cent of complainants to the police are men. Sometimes their sisters and mothers initiate the complaints because men are hesitant to admit the trouble. Is not cruelty and abuse the problem whether it originates from or to men or women? Now there’s a thought!
Gosh, you’re RIGHT! I have NEVER considered that before! Well, I don’t know you about other ladies, but my eyes have been opened!
I know Mary, I too was worried that no one would or even could pop along and ‘mansplain’ to me about the horrors and cruelty that can exist in the world.
I mean I read the title of the post before I commented, and yet I still can’t believe there was no mention about girls being married off, French and Italian women’s attitude to body hair and that men can be abused in domestic situations too.
Carry on.
Charlie, quite a few of your comments on this site have included you wondering why the poster had written on a certain topic. I don’t want to sound rude or discourage you from reading and commenting, but if you don’t see the point of loads of the posts, why on earth are you reading the Anti-Room? The Anti-Room is a blog about lots of things, including popular culture. That is what we do. Our contributors write about a wide variety of subjects. If you don’t think these subjects worthy of attention, I’m sure you can find plenty of other blogs that discuss topics you consider worthwhile.
I did wonder the same thing about commentators who seem to scoff and snigger but can’t keep away from reading the posts either. Is that love-hate, passive-aggressive or just plain old wank-wank?
To be honest, I would work on the assumption that “a growing trend” means about 200 upper-middle-class-and-crazy mothers in New York, and not get het up about it.
I mean, obviously the idea is gross. But I really doubt it’s a growing trend.
“There is a huge demand for waxing,” said Diane Fisher, owner of Eclips Salon and Eclips Kids Day Spa in McLean and Ashburn, Va., both Washington, D.C., suburbs. “Some kids do have a lot of hair. A 10-year-old with a dark mustache is going to feel self-conscious, and is going to ask for waxing.”
Nearly 20 percent of the clients that Nance Mitchell sees for bikini waxes in her Beverly Hills, Calif., salon are tweens, she says.
The International Spa Association reports that 16 percent of teens who have visited a spa have had a hair removal procedure done, but the organization has no numbers for younger children because they aren’t allowed to survey them. Several salon owners around the country told TODAYshow.com that the number of kids 12 and under coming in for waxing services has increased dramatically over the past three years.
I can though understand a young one being self conscious about facial hair, or really heavy growth on her legs or arms. There were a few girls in my school with dense coarse hair and they absolutely hated it. But bikini waxes? For ten year olds?
How times do change though, I wasn’t even allowed shave my legs at 12, in hairy desperation I had to nick my grand-dad’s razor and use his shaving brush to foam up.
They aren’t allowed to survey children but their members are allowed to wax them.
The whole thing is vile.
Contemptible, repugnant, vile. I wrote about this very thing last year in Belfast…after interviewing a woman who runs a beauty salon for kids to ‘ dip into alco-free champagne, have their nails done, legs waxed and fake tans applied.’ The woman who ran it thought it was all a fantastic idea to give little girls ‘confidence to be adult women later on’. “Kids even get a glass of non-alcoholic champagne when they book the Pamper Package for birthday parties,” she explained. It’s already here on our shores folks. And her salon is booked out most of the year, with kids as young as four availing of these ‘beauty treatments’. The mind boggles.
Wow, that’s just horrible. But it reminds me, wasn’t there some kerfuffle about false nails and spray tans on kids doing their communion? ‘Confidence to be an adult’. Jeez, what’s so wrong wrong with letting kids just be kids for as long as they can?
Indeed, and also, who says “being an adult” means covering yourself in fake tan and getting your legs waxed?
Thank you for your advice. Don’t you think the world a very strange place?
Seems like you’re taking an extremely fringe practice and trying to draw conclusions about general society from it. Of course a salon owner is going to claim she has a high number of clients. They always do that for their fringe practices to try and make people believe everyone is doing it.
Once you publish on the internet you are fair game. If you do not wish people to take a critical viewpoint you shouldn’t do it. Being a sensitive soul, I have looked at my comments. I cannot in fairness to myself think them rude or threatening in any way. I have frequently expressed a contrary view. In my own philosophical approach to life I assume that anyone who agrees with me is either a knave or a fool: that is, whatever my understanding my views are bound to be partial, incomplete and sometimes downright wrong. It is in exploring these shortcomings that we come into a better understanding of the truth. Some anti contributors believe that no matter how foolish their views (and I am not implying that they are) they should be greeted with love, appreciation and enthusiasm. Any one who is misguided enough to do this is not doing the contributor or anyone else a favour. Now my own view of contributors is pretty high. I think you are a feisty, well-organised lot well able to withstand a little opposition.
I am relieved to tell you that on the whole readers do not like my blog. I am a satirst and cannot be one unless I recognise false Gods, pomposity and foolishness. However, I do make people laugh. Yes, I do.
You don’t think there’s anything at all patronising about:
Now there’s a thought!
The thing is, you’re not saying anything interesting or original. Anyone who has talked or thought about feminist topics for more than six months has already heard all the “don’t you think there are more important issues” “not all woman agree with that” and everything else you’ve said – that’s why there are bingo cards made of your kind of comment (http://hoydenabouttown.com/20070414.431/anti-feminist-bingo-a-master-class-in-sexual-entitlement/). It’s not just that everything you’re saying is a boring cliche, it’s gone beyond that – even making a bingo card of the boring cliches that you and men like you spout is a boring cliche.
So you know, it’s not that we’re not “feisty” enough to take opposition (good Lord, there’s a patronising word if ever I heard one!), it’s just that it’s REALLY, REALLY BORING.
I had my first manicure a while ago in a salon in Donnybrook courtesy of a free voucher that was given to me. As I walked in for my first manicure at the tender age of 49, directly behind me was a 7 year old girl, who was going for her first “princess” manicure…. she will be well bored by the time she is 49!.
Hi Charliechops. I don’t object to you commenting on my posts. You are polite and thoughtful, if sometimes so far off the mark that you are shooting backwards.
I love it when my views are greeted with enthusiasm but I appreciate them being read and commented on at all, unless the comment is rude or obnoxious.
I have an answer to your original criticism but I decided I couldn’t be arsed to write it down and some of my fellow anti roomers, including the clever and concise Anna Carey, dispatched you admirably on this account.
I am looking forward to reading the next anti room post.
Very generous of you Amanda. I have always found it interesting to imagine what you might hit when you are far off the mark. At one time of my life I had to learn how to fire a range of firearms. For some time I always missed the target with my first shot or round but hit it on the second attempt.Not truly satisfactory I know.
I visited a toy shop in Nagasaki City with an English friend about two years ago and noticed something astonishing: one wall of this toy shop was covered in frilly, highly sexual female underwear. My friend queued up to pay for the fluffy toys he was buying his little brothers and sisters back home – ahead of him two teenage girls were buying lingerie.
Baffling stuff! I thought at the time that this seemed disturbing; Ireland is sometimes a few years behind trends abroad so I hope to hell we don’t end up with this crap or the mad horribleness of that virgin-waxing nonsense.
Is there a male equivalent to this premature obsession with appearence and sex? If there is perhaps it’s the body-building culture. Fascinating documentary about the destructive side-effects of steroid-use and extreme body-building: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2os43_the-man-whose-arms-exploded-one_sport
Obviously small girls don’t walk themselves into salons and pay for a waxing treatment, or for getting their nails done – they’re brought there by parents who quite frankly could do with their noodles being examined, and i’m not talking about those lovely things i eat with chilli.
I think what’s interesting is that these trends are all urban-based. Does everything bonkers like this start in cities and then spread to rural areas? Anyone know of reverse trends?
Mary
Is there, perhaps, a lot of anger here? Boring is a word familiar to me. My daughter, when young, used it a lot as a reason for not doing things, thinking things, going places. And so far as I know, there are no people like me. So people like me do not do anything, think anything, at all. At least that should be something of a relief.What is left, Mary, is someone who disagrees with you; not perhaps about the substance of much that you say.(Do you really think that anyone without a commercial interest is persuaded of the virtue of waxing a small child’s legs?) but the importance you attach to it and the way you argue against it as evidence of original sin.
God, this schtick is getting tiresome.
Or even just ‘trite’. Does this guy hound any other blogs on a daily basis or is he just having fun ‘annoying the women’ and thinking it dreadfully smart? It’d be a different thing if his comments had any substance at all, but they don’t. *yawn* If he persists on saying nothing and everendingly so for the sake of, I for one would back you blocking his comments. You are under no obligation as ‘editors’ to allow every single musing through, especially when someone is increasingly taking the ‘pest’ approach and being a dull repetitive pain in the arse.
Thanks for this. I think you’re right. It’s taking up far too much time. And it’s all barely readable.
i’m the type to have opinions and yet step back and look at the whole world and realize that my personal reactions may not represent the world accurately. so what i have observed, males are circumcised upon birth to “sexualize” and make them fit in with the common adult. (yes i realize that circumcision cuts off many of the important nerves of the penis. yet another contradiction of sexualization). their penis won’t affect anybody until they have sex, yet it is done as children. do you think this is comparable? also a parallel- a male often has no choice, because of the age, to be circumcised. it must be taken into account that most circumcisions are not religion-based anymore.
Dont bother guys. Women believe its all our fault for everything and they are better than us. We also shave our private areas for same reason women do. But womens stand point is more severe because they are women and guys do not deal with similar issues with the opposite sex.
So to get women to shut it you must just go along with it. They are always Correct because they are women and more intelligent than men.
There seems to be a lot of comment that this is an urban based trend. New etc. But what about the common practice of threading hair on girls of all ages in certain parts of Asia (hair removal is hair removal, right?).