The other day on a Facebook group I belong to, someone asked for recommendations for salon waxing for her school-age daughter. She said that her daughter was being teased and bullied at school for having body hair.
From the sound of it, I gathered that her daughter was still a child, somewhere between 10-12.
GRRR! ? It just made me so angry. Why should a young girl’s state of hairiness be a concern among her peers? I guess I’ve forgotten how petty and mean kids can be.
It’s weird for me to think that elementary school girls would even be concerned about this, but my childhood was a long time ago. Maybe I’m remembering the world the way I want it to be more than the way it was, but I seem to recall being more interested in watching cartoons and reading the Sweet Valley High books at that age than I was with body hair.
I don’t remember being concerned about body hair removal at all until I was at least 13… That’s when I started shaving my legs, which only happened then because someone in my class pointed it out one day when I was wearing shorts (“Did you forget to shave?”).
I was mortified.
I didn’t start waxing my upper lip hair or plucking my brows, though, until college… Maybe I should’ve started earlier, LOL. Seriously, though, if you look closely at the pics of the girls in my high school class yearbook, half of us had a fine layer of fuzz on our upper lip, and most (if not all) of the girls I knew had natural brows.
It’s a different world now…
Back to that Facebook group — in response to that mom’s plea, many people gave recommendations, and quite a few moms said that once they started taking their kids to salons for waxing, threading, plucking and getting fuzz-free, their kids were much happier and more confident, and I can definitely see that. Speaking for myself, I feel a lot better after my body hair situation gets sorted out.
The world is a different place than it was thirty years ago. Or is it? It seems like it in some ways.
What do you think? Is there such a thing as being too young to wax, thread or pluck?
Your friendly neighborhood beauty addict,
Karen
I started shaving my legs at 12 after I told my mom I wanted to start. This was in the mid 90s. I also had upper lip hair. My mom was understanding about it because she had really dark hair as well. I think I started using Nair before a razor ? but that didn’t last long because of the smell. I wasnt picked on about that, but at that age it could be anything people would bully or pick on you about. I thought my mom’s method worked because she didn’t say anything about it until I brought it up. She told me when she was growing up, she didn’t ask her mom about it, she just did it lol. Every kid is different and what they are willing to talk to their parents about.
Yes it’s think the world is quite a different place even from when I grew up. I’m 36, and I remember when I was a freshman a guy that I liked told my friend that I would be cute if I shaved my mustache. Needless to say, I started waxing my lip immediately. But I never dated that guy and I’m glad I didn’t. I think with instagram and everyone looking so perfect, girls are wearing makeup much younger and worrying about body and face hair much younger.
There’s never been a generation as image-conscious as kids today. My young children have grown up with a camera phone pointed at them every day (btw, what is an actual camera?) I already hear them talk negatively about their appearance, and it’s painful, let me you tell you.
I remember many of the girls when I was in school starting to shave at 11 or so. (Late 90s early 2000s). I started with Nair because my mom was afraid of me cutting myself, and I didn’t do it too often because my leg hair is blond and not terribly noticeable. However, my best friend had really dark thick hair and still does, and she got made fun of.
I can’t shave as frequently as a lot of people because of skin irritation, especially in the underarms. I just recently started doing removal of my facial hair. I’ve tweezed brows intermittently since high school. I only really started caring maybe 6 or 7 years ago.
I don’t have kids, but this makes me so sad. It is way different than when I was in school. If I had a child, and she was being bullied, I think I would take her to get the hair removal. I would rather have it done right than have her try shaving her brows and jack them up for life.
I think if it makes a kid feel more confident, whatever age is fine. I think I started shaving my legs around age 12. I was (and am) super hairy, although medium blonde. My forearms are incredibly hairy; I’ve never shaved them and no one teased me as a kid, but when I was teaching, a kid commented on it. I was old enough to shrug it off (and I think the kid, although middle school aged, was actually curious versus mean), but it would have devastated me if I had been younger. I’d probably let my kid shave/wax/pluck and simultaneously encourage them to think about why they do it and think about if the benefits they get from it are proportional to the cost/time as they get older.
I tweeted my uni brow and shaved my legs since I was ten .
That being said , as a school nurse I had a forth grader being teased about her hairy lip .
I reached out to her older sister on the high school and she took care of the problem .
All was well after that .
I started shaving at around 12, ’cause I’m a hairy beast and the girls at school (mind, this was about 1977) were flat our making fun of me. At first I had to sneak, because my mom had some bizarre idea that I shouldn’ t shave my legs or underarms till I was 16. My arms are pretty hairy too, but I drew my personal line at shaving my arms. So yeah, Kids have always been mean about stuff like this.
Body shaving/waxing shouldn’t be anyhow age-controlled. If this is a problem- it can be done at any age. If there is a need -it means there is a problem related to that. Basically this is an adverse event of social media-cultivated beauty standards, which now are accessible to any kid who owns smartphone in his possession/has access to it. So – the beauty requirements start to apply for younger and younger children. I wouldn’t personally care much that my child does depilation. I’d more concern that my child cannot attend normally school because she does not wear thick layer of makeup, which as a bomb of chemical substances actually do penetrate through teenagers/childs skin much easier than for us – the mature ones…
Hi Karen! Hope all is well. I started hair removal around 11 only because I was picked on. Girls can be so mean. I didn’t want my daughter to go through that so I suggested it once she was 11 and she is a completely different human than me because her response was “mom who cares, if someone doesn’t like my hairy legs, that’s totally not my problem.” I’m glad she’s still comfortable in her own skin at 14 now, she shaves her legs every now and then but I take her to wax her underarms because as she says that’s one place she can not stand hair. I think hair removal is a case by case situation.
I wonder if the girl has dark, Mediterranean type hair?? I mean, I just wonder why it would be something that bullies would highlight? Ugh… kids can be so mean. Good Lord though, why would her Mom ask about WAXING?! Why would you make your child get waxed. Like damn. If her daughter is really wanting to, she can shave! I started shaving around this age. About grade 8, so I would have been 13. My Mom didn’t think I needed to, but I really wanted to start shaving, so she bought me a shaver. I remember it well, it was like a right of passage haha. The other girls in my grade were starting to shave. And they did sort of make fun of one the girls who didn’t shave. The girl was blonde and gorgeous, and I always respected her for bucking the trend LOL. She didn’t care what anyone thought of her.
I’m not a mom but I definitely think we live in a different world!
I didn’t start wearing makeup til way into college and even then it was just mascara and eyeliner.
I definitely started shaving when I was 11 (wayyyy too young and I wish I had waited).
I wanted to fit in I guess, but I didn’t care that I had body hair and honestly it was so fine and light that I could probably have waited til high school.
I hope that if I have a daughter, I can advise her against it until she starts high school.
I started shaving my legs when I was maybe 11 or 12 (late 80’s/early 90’s)? I also shaved my arms around the same time. I am of South Asian descent and while the hair is soft, it’s very dark. I started using Nair on my face/upper-lip probably in high school but I have to be careful about that because if I don’t leave it on long enough it doesn’t remove the hair and too long and my skin burns. I recently discovered shaving my face with one of those teeny tiny electric shavers, it’s much faster, gentler on my skin and works better. I use facial oil to help protect my skin first. I have been plucking my eyebrows since about 11 or 12 also. My parents weren’t happy about it, but it was my choice. The hair bothered me and I was teased about it.
What caught my attention was when my daughter asked me what to do about the hair on her legs, underarm and upper lip. She was 11. Apparently a lot of the girls in her class were already shaving or waxing. We talked about it and she asked if she could get waxed. I did tell her the pros and cons of each. Together we decided she could give waxing a try. She made it through the legs and called it quits. When we were on the way home we stopped to buy her a razor. Since she only had a few dark hairs on her upper lip, I was able to tweeze them. I can’t believe my “baby” is shaving. I want my daughter to be happy with her appearance. I’m saving myself for bigger battles that may occur down the road. Hello tattoos, and body piercings, other than pierced ears!
I’m too old to remember back that far (68), but I do remember my daughter was bullied at school for not shaving when she was about 12-13. I was horrified that anyone was checking her out that closely! So I taught her to shave then. I don’t remember plucking my brows until my 30’s (so 30ish years ago). I still pluck and occasionally wax, but I have pretty hairy brows!
With instagram, snapchat and youtube, image consciousness is very much talked about at an early age. My youngest is still really young (4 yo) but I do have a lot of mom friends who have girls in elementary, middle and high school and we’ve had many conversations surrounding grooming, hygiene and even laser options. I know girls who started shaving their legs as early as 4th grade because they have dark hair so its very noticeable when they wear a skirt or shorts. They feel self conscious about it and argue that their moms shave their legs so why can’t they. I know they don’t go wielding the razor on their own but it allows for mom to have a healthy conversation about the whys and whats of grooming. I know I didn’t start shaving until I was 12 and didn’t pluck my brows until high school and definitely didn’t wax my upper lip until college but with selfies and filters being a lot of girls norm, image is viewed differently. I’ll admit that I’m one who’s on board with letting my girl get her underarms and legs lasered. She unfortunately has my body hair trait of dark hair and light skin so if I can provide that option to help make grooming easier then I’ll do it.
I was 13 when I started shaving my legs. My line is that I am a brunette EVERYWHERE! ?. Right before I got married, my soon to be sister in law asked me how old I was when I started. She was very disappointed when I said 13. I think she was hoping I’d help her convince her mom to let her do it. She was 11 (& blonde). When I mentioned it to my mother in law, she was like ‘they are obsessed with wanting to shave their legs.’
I’m Indian and I inherited the super hairy genes from my dad. To make matters worse in middle school I was in a predominantly Chinese school so no one had any body hair at all. I had a total uni brow and mustache and the hardest thing was that a boy I had a crush on would make fun of me (ruthlessly).
I didn’t know what to do. My mom wasn’t into beauty and was fairly hairless. It was so hard. It didn’t help that I was a late bloomer too.
I started plucking my brows in high school and did cold waxing on college.
Teens and tweens these days (I have a 15-year-old daughter) are generally more accepting and tolerant of others’ appearance and grooming choices than previous generations. My daughter doesn’t shave her armpits and she says nobody notices or cares. I do think it’s important to listen to girls who are feeling insecure about their appearance and let them do whatever will make them feel more confident. When I was young I had hairy sasquatch legs and my mother wouldn’t let me shave until I was 14, I suffered agonies of embarrassment, sure that everyone in the 8th grade was secretly laughing at me, and eventually stole a razor out of the trash and absolutely shredded my legs shaving dry because I didn’t know any better, then got in trouble for disobeying my mom. I still have the scars, figuratively and literally. I wish she had listened to me and helped me, instead of dismissing my concerns and making me feel even more awkward and misunderstood. It’s natural to want our girls to “stay kids” and not obsess over being Instagram-perfect, but it’s so much more important to help them feel comfortable and confident in their bodies as much as is possible.
I have a 10 year old who inherited my unibrow ( I’m Assyrian, Middle Eastern) I’ve been taking one of trimmers to it since it formed ( 7 years old or so?)on her. I Hated mine when I was a kid and when I look at pictures of myself I only see that dang unibrow! She is blonde and has blonde hair everywhere else. She has asked to shave but I said to wait until it actually shows or gets darker. Shaving is a lot of work and commitment that she is not ready for. That said, when I was about 11 I shaved and was petrified of my mom finding out. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal. It’s body hair, treat it like a haircut. If your child is uncomfortable with it, do something about it. I wish my mom was more open to it. I had that damn unibrow until high school. UGH!!
I think I was about 16 when I started to shave (but I am blonde, so the hair wasn’t that noticeable), and it was at the same time my youngest sister started shaving. She was 11 back then, and I remember thinking that this was early. But I guess times change and I would probably allow my daughter to sort out her body hair once she starts to get self-conscious about them.
I remember being at camp (12-ish) and noticing some other girls pointing at my leg hair, as if just noticing it and wondering why it was there (they had none.) It bothered me so much that the entire two weeks I was there I refused to wear shorts. Only pants- if it was really hot, I’d begrudgingly wear capris. The only thing I wish I had done differently was to wax it, if I had religiously stuck with only waxing by now I’d hardly have any leg hair left. Shaving has left me with ugly scars from ingrown hair flare ups. I’ve decided this winter, instead of laser hair removal (which doesn’t work for me- discovered that on another part of my body) I’m going to stick with getting waxed.
I agree that Instagram and social media has an impact. it’s disturbing that the internet has so much influence on how we see ourselves and others, and the Western beauty standard. I am lucky on several counts with my daughter on this score- she was late to join Instagram(Junior in HS) and travelled to Cuba as a HS freshman, which really helped her define for herself what beauty standards and societal norms are. She is just now experimenting with how she wants her brows etc to look and most of the time she doesn’t bother too much about the rest. I am also thankful that we live in San Francisco and associate with a lot of international immigrant and “hippie moms”, so she realizes that there is a wide range of choice in what’s socially acceptable appearance when that is your community! Boo on bullying at any age.
First of all, I’m well into my seventies so I grew up in a different universe 🙂
I started shaving my legs when I entered junior high (grades 7-9). We had to wear skirts or dresses with nylons in those days. A lot of hair scrunched up under the nylons always looked gross so one of the rites of passage was shaving our legs. I also began shaving my armpits at that time as well as did most of the girls. In fact, in our segregated-by-sex PE classes, we were instructed about shaving or legs and pits as part of routine grooming.
As for plucking eyebrows and waxing the upper lip, I didn’t start plucking my brows until I was 15 and I didn’t start waxing my upper lip until college.
So, when is early too early? I think that depends on the discomfort or embarrassment the child might feel about the hair on their legs. As for plucking brows, except for in the case of an obvious unibrow, I’d say don’t touch them. Over plucking; especially at such an early age, can damage or destroy the hair follicles. Keep the brows natural and let the child decide what kind of brow she wants when she is older and hopefully wiser. Waxing a child’s upper lip is a situation like the brows–leave it alone unless it is very thick or dark until the chid is old enough to take matters into her own hands. Waxing is painful, and repeated waxing over time can damage the skin and, in some cases, even cause it to discolor. I think most girls are capable of making good decisions about waxing and plucking by the time they enter high school.
I was picked on when I was 12 or 13 because when I shaved I stopped at the knee rather than getting all the hair up to mid-thigh, and I am so angry about it still. Shaving made me really itchy and my legs were covered in scabs because of it, and I stopped a while after that and have never shaved since. I was really embarrassed about it too for most of my life and wouldn’t wear shorts that drew attention to my legs for fear of people noticing that I don’t shave.
But the thing I want to say here is not about the age it’s acceptable but that to me it’s unacceptable that girls feel that they HAVE to shave their excess hair or they’ll be embarrassed or bullied. I wish the question weren’t about whether they’re at the right age but whether it’s something they’re doing for themselves. If they like the feel of hairlessness, great! If it’s too much of a chore for them, it shouldn’t be something they feel they have to do. Fight the bullying and pressure to do things to conform.
Sadly, kids have always been mean and have a pack mentality, which leads to nearly every kid being made fun of, for something, at some time. Looks are by far the easiest things to point out. Some kids (and adults) handle teasing better than others. There is a big difference between being made fun of/embarrassed and being bullied, though. That said, I find my boys and their friends to be much more accepting of their peers than kids were when I was in school. I do think it’s harder for girls since there is so much emphasis put on their physical appearance. I started shaving my legs in 9th grade, but only below the knee. That’s probably around the time I broke out the Nair for my ‘stache. My friend’s (very fashionable) older sister tweezed our eyebrows for the first time for a wedding when we were just out of college, but I’m sure I tweezed between my brows much earlier, so as not to look like Bert from Sesame Street, with the mange. Probably around 9th grade for that, too.
Karen, let me share something with you:
I have never been hairy. I consider myself, normal, maybe even light, in terms of hair-iness (is that what it would be called?), Growing up, I was never teased about not shaving my legs. I was always a confident kid. I do remember friends asking “Why don’t you shave?” versus, “You NEED to shave!”. I never felt pressured to do it, but one day I got curious (around the age of 12-ish) and asked my mom if I could. Of course she said no, because I didn’t need it.
Well, I remember vividly: New years morning, the year I was in 8th grade. I woke up early to shave for the first time behind my moms back. I was standing in the shower, shaving with my leg on the wall when I slipped and fell in the shower. As I sat on the shower floor with water falling on me, I raised my hand looking for the razor. Well, I had fallen holding the razor in my right hand and landed razor side down on the top of my left hand. The shower was an absolute crime scene with blood everywhere. I had sliced the top of my left hand open, fully exposing my knuckles down to the bones. I had to wake up my parents and showed them my sliced open hand and be rushed to the emergency room. 5 stitches, 3 large needles injected into my hands and fingers and being told I narrowly missed slicing an artery and paralyzing my hand/arm traumatized me and I never wanted to shave again. I still have the long scar on top of my left hand and slight razor scars around my middle finger where the razor grazed but didn’t slash my actual finger. Needless to say, I was more scared of having to confess to my mom I disobeyed and shaved behind her back. LOL I can laugh now, but even now as a grown up, I rarely shave, ONLY when I “need to”. I give zero f*$@s whenever someone asks jokingly why I don’t shave. I do it when I feel like it.
I think it’s all about instilling confidence in the child. I try my damned hardest to teach my soon to be 8 year old daughter that she is perfect the way she is, and not to let other peoples words get to her self esteem. But I know it will happen. I just pray the day it does, she has the courage to come to me and let me help her figure out how to handle it. With that said, I wouldn’t exactly say She needs to be a certain age, but I would def prefer if she was older. No way it would happen while under the age of 11….I want her to stay as innocent as long as she can, but if she can make her case and sway me, then hey, at least let me help you do things right…maybe I can help her avoid having to get stitches lol.