Why can’t our baby girls be little girls for the God-given time they are supposed to be?I feel like one of my elder aunties wishing for the “good old days” when I say this, but I’m concerned about my daughter, and all of our daughters.
Last week, news was released that girls as young as seven and eight years old are going through puberty, and now there’s a growing trend where parents are encouraging their daughters of the same young age to go to salons to have their body hair removed.
First of all, ouch, and next, why?
In a segment on NBC, one woman said her nine-year-old granddaughter gets her eyebrows and lip waxed and she’s been shaving for a year: “It makes her feel better about herself,” the grandmother said.
In the current issue of Allure magazine, Kim Kardashian reveals that her “entire body is hairless,” claiming her Armenian ancestry makes hair-removal a must.
Hair grows all over our bodies and it can be embarrassing for an adult woman, so I can imagine what a young girl being teased by classmates can feel. I do understand removing facial hair or body hair that is unsightly, but waxing the pubic area–which I’m assuming no one but a young girl’s mama should see before and much after puberty–seems extreme.
In certain societies, body hair on females of all ages is looked down upon. In Egypt, dating back to 1900 B.C. a smooth body has been a standard of beauty, so they removed hair from females of all ages with a mixture of sugar, water, lemon. Sugaring is now known as one of the most popular methods of female facial hair removal around the world. The mixture turns into a gummy substance and then…let ‘er rip.
If we are indeed maturing at a faster rate and kids are going through puberty earlier, it’s sad. Little girls don’t deserve grown-up problems. Why should they even have to think this way? Pre-teens should be playing hop-scotch and taking karate classes and reading chapter books, not worrying about personal grooming. They’re already dealing with so much in society, and the over-saturation of sexuality in the media.
What ever happened to childhood?
