Aug13 This disgusts me on so many levels
Last night I stumbled upon an article that absolutely floored me. Entitled ‘Meet the pre-teen beauty addicts‘, the article was about girls in Britain as young as nine-years-old who are already so obsessed with beauty that they take two hours to get ready in the morning.
When I was nine, I wore pink sweatpants and a purple Pocahontas sweatshirt, or maybe overalls. My mom was lucky if she could get me to brush my hair in the morning. These girls, who are between the ages of nine and twelve, are getting spray tans, manicures, highlights, and waxings.
My idea of a manicure was coloring my fingernails with markers or putting Elmer’s glue all over my hands and then peeling it off once it was dry.
Then again, I was not involved in any kind of modeling or pageantry, as these girls are. If I had been, and had started behaving like this, my parents, being sane, would have pulled my butt out of that deal and told me, “NO MAKE-UP UNTIL YOU’RE THIRTY!”
These mothers are destroying their children, and it disgusts me. Belle Chapman’s mother Cheryl had this to say about her daughter, who is eleven:
“She does all this very sexy dancing, ’shaking your booty’ I think it’s called.
But she has no idea how sexual the moves are. I wonder what’s going to be left for her when she actually becomes a teenager — where is it all headed?”
Yet she doesn’t put a stop to all of this nonsense. And how about this gem of a quote from nine-year-old Bethany’s mother?
Catherine says: “If her nails need doing or the tan needs topping up, Bethany complains she doesn’t feel right - a feeling lots of women can associate with.”
I’m sorry, Catherine, but your child is not a woman. She’s a nine-year-old girl. She should be stringing up McDonalds toys with dental floss, pretending they’re The Borrowers. She should be outside riding her bike for two hours, not inside executing her beauty regimen. She should be wrestling a Barbie away from the dog, or trying to talk her sister into eating a mud pie.
Please, someone go slap these parents silly. I would do it myself, but unfortunately I’m on the other side of the pond (and then some).
Photograph copyright © gofish343.
This post is 382 words long and is part of ERULYNSKY Blogathon 3000
View the score so far!
This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 9:49 am in General, Politics. You can subscribe to the comment feed to follow replies or leave a trackback from your own site.
Han says...
I didn’t start shaving my legs till I was in year 8!! I still don’t care about doing it properly!
I still maintain that girls should wear leggings and baggy tshirts until their 13 like I did! God i was sad! and I dont mean those trendy leggings nooo I mean elasticated waist jeans!!
Aug. 13th, 2007
Crystal says...
One day these brats are going to realize that if they want to use all those beauty products, they’ll have to pay it because mommy and daddy are now in poverty.
I have almost NO make up… i straighten my own hair… and i’ve never gotten a manicure. My parents spend their money on SAT books -.-
Aug. 13th, 2007
Mallory says...
I think little girls are getting drawn into pop culture and the parents aren’t doing anything to stop it. When a girl is 11 and “booty dancing”, she isn’t going to be right when she gets older. She’ll think it’s normal behavior to act much older than she is, and probably get in a lot of trouble for it. Young girls should be taught to love and accept themselves. This sort of behavior at such a young age leads to a lifetime of self-hate, eating disorders and passing this behavior onto their own daughters.
I’ve never really been that girly. My sister is, but she seems to have her head on straight about things like beauty, self-worth and self-confidence.
Aug. 13th, 2007
Chanel says...
That’s appalling. And sad, really.
Children modeling is one thing, but child beauty pageants seem awfully messed up to me. It isn’t even about the girls at all - it’s about their crazy mothers who are obviously lacking something and trying to make up for it by showing off their daughters like show dogs.
Where are these girls heading, and what’s left for them, their mothers ask?
The looney bin.
Seriously. I mean, I say it in half joke, but the reality of it is that children simply cannot grow up in that kind of environment and escape unscathed. You can look to the girls who grew up in Hollywood (Olsen twins or Lindsay Lohan anyone?) and see how obvious that is. It’s simply not healthy.
Aug. 13th, 2007
lene says...
Ugh that disgusts me so much too! I’ve seen things and I’ve seen things. But geez those quotes…
Is that real? o_O
Parents should open their eyes and see what they are dealing with…
Aug. 13th, 2007
Laura says...
If I wasn’t a non-violent person, I would slap these mothers silly for you. Unfortunately, it seems they are going to have to learn the hard way.
Aug. 13th, 2007
Hannah says...
Oh man, this irks me too. Little girls walking down the street looking like hookers… it’s pathetic. And it’s the parents + the media to blame. The media probably makes girls think that to be beautiful you have to cover up your natural self.
Aug. 13th, 2007
Beth says...
I read this too, and I’m also disgusted. These little 9-year-olds spend more time beautifying themselves than I do, and I’m 16. It’s not so much the girls that sicken me but the fact the parents let them - shelling out all that money so they can have fake tans, manicures, etc. What’s wrong with playing outside in the sun, or buying a few bottles of nail polish and a tub of hand cream?
Aug. 14th, 2007
Daniela says...
Yeah, same with me. I can’t understand why mothers do this. I mean, a mother should let her daughter have a childhood. And I am sure, that girl Bethany only feels upset about her nails because her mother told her so. NO child will ever feel like that voluntarily…
Aug. 14th, 2007
Alex says...
This kind of makes me appreciate being a guy, even though we have ‘images’ that society expects us to become. Most of the people here think that guys should be tall, strong, and able to beat someone up, but hardly any of the guys where I live fit the criteria. What happened to just being the boy-next-door?
Like the article pointed out, if the girls are like this even before puberty, what’s going to happen to them when they’re 16? I remember when I was 9, I used to play with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures… such simple times.
Aug. 14th, 2007
Amanda says...
That’s among the top worst things I’ve read/heard about all week. Those mothers should be ashamed. What I don’t get is what they get out of all of it… surely one wouldn’t be pleased about spending hundreds on beauty products, let alone for a nine year old child?!
Aug. 15th, 2007
Jem says...
I blame **** like those BRATZ dolls. They’ve turned our little girls into sex objects for perverts all over the world.
Aug. 15th, 2007
Jools says...
This is ridiculous. I was in pageants and modeling and all that as a child and I was never into anything as bad as that! My mother taught me that makeup was something for the stage and not to be worn on the street. What’s gotten into these parents?
Aug. 15th, 2007
christine says...
Never in my life would I ever put my daughter through that when she is in her pre-teen years, never. That is terrible and those mothers have somthing wrong with them to sell out there kid in front of millions of people. They do it for the money, which is also sad. I was watching something like this on television one night and it discussed me, there was this one little girl she was 10 years old and she didn’t want to put makeup on and her mother started yelling at her like if she were a piece of trash. I think that we should start a petition and send it to our presidents to have this banished because it’s so terrible to treat kids like this.
Aug. 15th, 2007
Kimmie says...
Oh man, I am so making my kids play outside. I played outside every single day till… oh wait I still do.
Aug. 15th, 2007
Shawna says...
I agree wholeheartedly.
You know, I’m not really sure. I think the Moms definitely get something out of the pageantry and modeling. That part is probably a “living vicariously through your child” kind of thing, where the fact that their daughter is doing something they didn’t get to do makes them feel… accomplished? But with regards to the beauty treatments, it would seem the only reason they do that is because they’re parents who don’t know how to say, “No.”
Aug. 15th, 2007
Emma says...
Thanks for the comment :)
I know what you mean its sick, in a magazine I was reading recently a 10 year old girl was encouraged to do all those things by her mother and her mother said somehting like “I don’t see why its a problem, people are just jealous because they have fat and ugly children” which is just an awful thing to say.
Aug. 16th, 2007
Kay says...
I’ve seen some of those girls looking like 25. Like and actual barbiw doll. I would slap them but jail isn’t in my future…
It’s not right to watch little kids get robbed from their child like that. Thats not normal…
Aug. 16th, 2007