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Childhood banished for kids of the rich
'Children of pampered are being taken for a ride without backward glance'
Plucking stray hairs so the eyebrows are arched just so, bikini wax jobs and even microderm abrasion – all the chores of maintaining the female body in competition to be a supermodel. Except these girls are ages 8 or 9, or maybe 10.
Denny reports Lauren Albert, Rescue Rittenhouse Spa director, says moms often haul in daughters ages of 10 to 14 for waxes, nail services and facials, and expert advice on makeup.
"It's not just to get them ready for their big party," Albert told the magazine. "It's like, 'Okay, you’re becoming a woman now, here are the things you'll need to do as a woman.'"
But Denny pointed out the young girls are not women.
"This new, unstoppable desire of mothers to pluck and paint their daughters has created an unexpected conundrum for spa owners and aestheticians, who can't afford to lose the moms' lucrative business – but who also don't want to be partners in crime," she wrote.
Owner Joseph Cutrufello of the Pierre & Carlo European Salon & Spa said the moms are advised about the pain, sweating, and skin irritation that can result from some treatments. Denny reported at Bernard's Salon & Day Spa in Cherry Hill, marketing director Carla Ciocoila-Toppi is more direct.
"We've flat-out told mothers that highlighting such a young girl's hair is a bad idea, and something we’d rather not do. But so many mothers push anyway that now we have them sign a waiver."
"It's like this keeping-up-with-the-Joneses thing has stretched to our kids," Dasha Klein, who has an 11-year-old daughter. She said she knows 16-year-olds who have had breast implants and a 20-year-old who gets Botox.
"They're trying to keep up with Hollywood – and Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and Miley Cyrus and whoever else they're looking at," she said.
What the hell is the parents doing, deciding their daughters breast are to small ....