Lindsay Schultz, a 31-year-old mother in Phoenix, Arizona, had no clue what to do when her six-year-old daughter, Lily “gazed in the mirror and announced, ‘I look like the Grinch.’”
Schultz explained, “She has her father’s olive skin and dark hair, so I knew one day Lily would want to remove it. I just wasn't expecting it to happen so soon.”
Sadly, Schultz isn’t the only mother who has been faced with this predicament.
Aylin Akar, 48, and a mother from Toronto, Ontario has two daughters, both of whom have thick, dark body hair. “The boys were making fun of [Tuana, Akar’s younger daughter],” Akar recalled.
“[Tuana] was just eight, but they teased her about her unibrow and laughed that her leg hair was longer and darker than theirs. They were merciless.”
Both Schultz and Akar couldn’t bear the thought of their daughters suffering at the hands of rude, impolite peers at school, so they did what they thought was the best solution – take their daughters to have the offending hair removed.
Schultz had thought to offer removing her daughter’s hair before it ever became an issue in school, but she’d held back on it, not wanting young Lily to “associate beauty with confidence,” and “damag[e] her self-esteem.”
But after Lily began to vocalize her fears and concerns to her mother, Schultz tried to use the hair removal cream, Nair to get rid of Lily’s unibrow. When the cream only ended up burning Lily’s skin, Schultz took her daughter to a hair removal specialist.
Akar did the same for her daughters. Her older daughter, Lara, had already undergone this pattern of bullying and eventual hair removal. Lara consistently undergoes laser hair removal treatments that reduce the amount of hair on her back, stomach, face, legs, underarms, and even her bikini area.
When Tuana came to this point, at an age younger than her elder sister, Akar didn’t want Tuana to begin laser treatments so soon. Akar then took it upon herself to wax Tuana’s brows, underarms, and legs herself. “Now nobody makes fun of her,” Akar said with assertion.
While this trend of allowing young girls to undergo regular hair removal seems odd and potentially damaging, many skin care professionals are responding to the demand.
Lauren Snow, the director of membership for the Associated Skin Care Professionals, an association of aestheticians in the United States, has observed this trend increasing in popularity over the years.
“There are spas that cater to younger clients with service menus that are less intimidating,” Snow explained.
SugarSugar is one of these spas. Co-owner Aimee Blake recalls that she has even been approached by moms asking about services for their ten-year-old daughters. When asked to justify why she performs these beauty services on such young girls, Blake says, "Kids can be cruel.
“All it takes is for one kid on the playground to make a comment to cause a child's self-esteem to plummet. I'd rather a child have their eyebrows done safely and professionally than try to shave them at home by themselves. We are just here to help.”
Blake reassures mothers that she refuses to offer girls under 15 a bikini wax, and does nothing to create shape in the brows to make them “look glamorous.” “We do it responsibly, we educate parents and kids through every step of the process, and we only do it with parental consent,” Blake said.
While some spa owners and employees see their work as benefiting and helping young girls, others are more concerned about the long-lasting impacts of beginning hair removal practices so early.
A therapist in Washington, D.C., LaNail Plummer, said, “Hair removal is a big deal. You're creating the next generation of girls whose confidence is based on how they look rather than on who they are and what they offer internally. If you teach kids to associate confidence with body image, you risk damaging their self-esteem.”
In her eyes, it’s better to teach a child how to love herself – or himself – and have important conversations with them about their body image. If they want to remove their hair, it’s best a conversation and a decision saved for later in life.
Would you let your child remove their body hair at such a young age?
