Beauty Treatments for 10 Year Olds

[FP]

What are your feelings on girls as young as 10 being taken to beauty salons for facials, eyebrow shaping, manicures and fake tans?  This was a subject on TV a.m. this morning.

[milly143]

completely ridiculous. That's one way to raise a child in to an unstable, insecure teenager. Why on earth would a 10 year old need a facial!

[ICEMANSAV]

Gotta look your best for " daisy-chaining"!!

[FP]

I missed the results of the TV poll which followed the programme.    Personally, I think the best skin care and 'tanning' treatment a ten year old can get is plenty of excercise in the fresh air whilst they play.  Children of 10 should be playing - not visiting beauty salons.  The child on the programme was having a mask applied and her eyebrows shaped. 

I agree Milly143 the girls will become terribly unstable and insecure.  I assume the mothers that take them are regular clients themselves and have more money than sense, looking for pocket sized clones of themselves.

What a sad state of affairs.   

[FP]

Andy,   I totally agree

Icemansav,   actually quite a wise answer.  You may be right.

[Robinia]

Ridiculous - as if you need ask a 'grumpy'!!  Children should look and act like children, not mini adults.  I feel the same way about beauty treatments as I do about seeing them in skimpy crop tops & adult fashion etc in the street.  Dressing up for fun & playing with make-up is lovely & that's as far as it need go.

[magicdice]

we were all waxing our legs at thirteen, eyebrow plucking starts around that time too. some kids mature faster than others so feel like they need to shave their legs whilst still very young.

however, all this can be done at home, beauty salons have shown how morally bankrupt they are by not even discouraging this (as if UV fake-tanning wasn't bad enough) and if you want a manicure at that age, paint your fingernails in as many colours you can find whilst at a sleepover with your friends (which, seven years ago, was a completely normal activity for a ten year old)

[FP]

The therapist on the programme said that it would encourage the girls to take proper care of  their skin, etc. in later life, otherwise without the therapists' professional advice they might have more drastic things done when they were older!   A very poor excuse imho, for raking in the money.

[milly143]

I agree with Robinia on the dress issue as well. I regularly see girls who are no more then 9 or 10 dressed in mini skirts and little crop tops and its horrible. I know I must have wanted to wear clothes like that when I was that age for the simple fact that kids want to feel like adults, the only difference is that I was not allowed, as quite rightly my parents thought it was inappropriate.

[FP]

I am amazed at what some little girls are seen wearing these days.  Even tiny little girls are seen in 'adult' clothes.  I saw a little girl the other day aged about 7 in high heeled knee length black boots with a mini skirt and crop top and make up.  She was in the supermarket with her mother (who was dressed practically the same).

I can remember the arguments I had with my own mother about what clothing I should be wearing!  Little girls nearly always want to be 'grown up', but parents have a responsibility to protect them.  Letting them wear unsuitable and provocative clothing is dreadful.

Childhood is so short and so precious.  I feel so sorry that it seems to be shortened these days.

[karen3110]

Absolutely ludicrous if you ask me! At ten years old you hardly have enough adult teeth in your head, so there's definitely no need to worry about facial waxing!! Jeeze! It's all turning american on us, next thing we'll have those 'mini-me miss world' pageant's were the children are all dressed like dolly parton. There is something seriously wrong with that.

[oxeyedaisy]

i dont agree with it either kids should be clean tidy and well fed..its one of those fads that has come from the usa..where they have beauty pagents for the little girls ..i have seen them on chat shows and they are all manicured and look like little barbie dolls..its big business in the usa..hope my grandchildren dont want makeovers..they look fine as they are..

[Morrisonker]

I was speaking to my hairdresser about this today, she takes her 13 year old daughter into the salon to get her eyebrows waxed because if she doesn't the girl will try and pluck them herself and have horrible, thin chav-like eyebrows.  That sort of thing I can understand, i was probably like that at 13.

10 is far to young in my opinion, Magicdice i can assure you I wasn't waxing my legs at 13, neither were any of my friends.  Face masks are all very well, going in to the salon with mum and playing at being grown up for an hour or so, but waxing and tanning of any sort is ridiculous and disturbing.  All it's going to do is feed insecurities that will be with those girls for a long time.  Childhood, if nothing else, should be a time when you have no concerns, especially not about the way you look.

[brawburd]

Glad I didn't see that.  Angry enough just reading about it!  10 year olds are children, no debate.  They don't have cosmetic needs.  And the sexual connotations don't bear thinking about.  Those mothers are clearly insecure and shallow themselves.  As for clothes, don't get me started.  I recently saw a child (about 7) with a t-shirt which said "bite me".  What's that about?

[FP]

The treatments were quite expensive, so even a facemask would set mum back quite a bit!  The minimum cost was �5.00.  The little girl on the programme had a face mask applied and her eyebrows shaped with tweezers  She was 10!     I would quite happily let a little girl try a bit of my facemask if she was curious, or apply some makeup for fun.  I used to do it!   If my mum had come near me with tweezers I would have run!!

[FP]

Sorry, I have repeated part of my earlier posting.  It's me age!!

[FP]

I am just testing to see if I am up and running again!

[magicdice]

morrisonker i agree that 10 is too young, but virtually every year 9 girl (i.e. 13 or 14 years old) needs to shave her underarms, and so the vast majority are shaving their legs by this time too. i don't see why getting them waxed should be seen as any different to shaving them. i must stress that i am NOT condoning letting young girls try to make themselves look sexy, but i do remember that four years ago i started waxing my legs & plucking my eyebrows, and nobody saw it as weird at the time - my mother let me, and she's strict as.

[FP]

I agree magicdice that girls of 13 or 14 are probably ready to start shaving their armpits, legs etc and will start to use makeup.  That is natural and by that time they are growing into young women.    I don't think they should be thinking of beauty therapy at that age though.

My question was really regarding the 10/11/12 year olds.  Soon it will be 6 year olds being taken along to get face packs!  It seems the mothers want dolls or little replicas of themselves rather than children.

[magicdice]

it's all about drawing a line somewhere though, and i guess society's changing in such a way that children, particularly girls, aren't really children in the traditional playing-with-skipping-ropes-and-barbies connotation of the word anymore. however, i don't think that "childhood" is getting shorter - i won't be starting on a career path until i'm 21 at least, and there's no way i'll be thinking of getting married and having kids till i'm 30, whereas it seems that a few decades ago, 17 year olds were adults. so i guess things are just shifting slightly. but it probably only seems like this from my current perspective.