Yesterday, I visited two websites, thanks to blog posts I read on K3 and the Metrodad‘s pages. One was a super one called Storynory (thanks K-3!) that has the audio recordings (FREE!) of more than one hundred children’s tales like the Ugly Duckling, Three Little Pigs etc. I just played one for P and that net savvy child searched for a few more and sat highly entertained for a whole 30 minutes! Result!
The biggest advantage of Storynory is that we can subscribe to them for free, on iTunes. I have downloaded some of P’s favourites for us to listen to on the next car journey. So can the baby, in utero, I’m told! Not bad at all, I say!
Metrodad, as always, has highlighted a disturbing trend growing – that of mums carting their six-year olds for spa treatments and 8-year-olds for – wait for it! – bikini wax! The article, on Philadelphia magazine, made for some disturbing reading. I remember the first time I saw smoothly waxed legs on my classmates in my new, swanky school at age 16. I was like the proverbial country bumpkin and gawped all day long. I still had to wait till I finished my Class XII hurdle before I went for my first waxing session – I still remember the pain! As my mum trained to be a beautician, she knew heaps of people from her classes who had gone on to actually make money from what they had learnt. As a result, I always went to beauty parlours run by aunties my mum was pally with. This invariably meant that any suggestion of mine to tweak my eyebrows this way or get a facial (give me a break, I was in Ethiraj College, after all!) would get a derisive snort and I would end up with a home made herbal pack plonked on my face, to ‘protect my tender young skin’.
I shudder to think of 8-year-old girls undergoing bikini wax. What the hell is there to wax, anyway?! And why are mums putting their babies through this? Do we all want to end up with children who give Posh Spice a run for her money? Oh please, no!
thanks for the story nory link.. the bikini wax for 8yr olds is horrendous. Nobody thinks this is abuse now?
No problem. I know – how can subjecting your 8 year old to something barbaric as bikini wax not be considered abuse? Did you read the article fully? Microdermabrasion for 10 year olds! And I remember my parlour aunty laughing in my face when I murmured ‘facial’ at the ripe age of 17!!
Poor kids – childhood lost at the spas and beauty parlours.
OMG!!!! These mom’s are NUTS!!! I hope I never run across one, coz I would want to slap them straight! Ok you can see I am mad! Going to run to starbucks to cool off!
PS – happy that your kid(s) loved the stories, the website is really cool.
It’s a fab site – I loved the option of subscribing it on iTunes. And all for FREE! Way cool!
Like someone else commented, why doesn’t this constitute as abuse, I’d like to know? Putting an 8 year old through bikini wax is abuse, right?
This is just so crazy-what do those women think they are doing? Bah.
Creating “mini-me”s, Dipali. Wanna bet half of those poor sods would be in therapy by the time they hit their teens and most of them would be on reality TV by the time they hit 18?
I’ve said this before but… this is what comes of promoting famewhores as role models. Betcha those kids will have MySpace videos of them flashing their cootchie just like their favoritest celeb ever at the age of 13.
You know the scary part, Am? You might have hit it right on the head. *shudder*
It needed meteors to take out the dinosaurs – we are so advanced, we’d do the job ourselves, thanks very much.
i am speechless. really. i have no words to say/type/write after i read that article.
[...] gender issues Posted by the mad momma under feminism, gender, issues Got this link via Desigirl who got it via Metrodad. About girls as young as 9 being taught the art of make up by Vogue [...]
Like… WTF?!
I’m somewhat stunned. And at all of 19 years I’m supposedly one more generation down the line, right?
Surely we can’t put ALL of this down to nuclear families and the boundaries between children and adults being blurred?!?!?! The moms want “adult company” and will transform their daughters into adults, the kids don’t see other kids around except when in school and want to BE adults… this is effing screwed.
And the thought of a bikini wax sends chills down my spine.
Am I glad to see such a sensible teen or what? Waxing sends chills down my spine, period, never mind a Brazilian or Argentinian or any other South American. I seriously agree with some of the other commentators – this is abuse. Right? I mean, which moronic mind can compare this barbaric ritual to having a nail painting session together? hmm?
Bikini wax on babies? Why aren’t these women being arrested?
Well, apparently it is a mother-daughter bonding thingy!
Go figure!
Read an article yesterday that girls as young as 7 are getting highlights in their hair these days. That was a bit difficult to digest. I am still not sure if i am okay with little girls coming in for pedicures and manicures. But bikini waxes…man, that’s a bit too much!