Recently my daughter showed up at our house, after a weekend with Mom-Mom, with her fingernails and toenails painted pink.

She is 2 years old.

As a Dad, I am very protective of my child. I think she is beautiful whether she is dressed up for school pictures, covered in macaroni and cheese or leaking snot from her nose at the rate of a sprung fire hydrant. And while I want the world to think she is beautiful, too, I am not about to adorn her with lipstick and paint, especially since make-up’s very purpose is to “beautify and suggest attractiveness.”

Did I mention that she is 2 years old?

So you can imagine how this Phillyist feels about the new trend in body image manipulation amongst young girls—waxing! It seems that little girls from 8 years old to tween years are having body waxing and eyebrow shaping done. While some people, like Philadelphia aesthetician Melanie Engle, find the practice disturbing, some salons are eating it up. Take this advertisement for Wanda’s European Skin Care Center in New York:

Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing... and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!

Virgin hair.

Some parents say it’s because their girls get taunted for uni-brows, mustaches and excessive body hair, and that is certainly true in some instances. One 10-year-old girl had hair growing down her legs and was being teased for it. Kids can be cruel and I might very well consider doing the same thing to save my daughter from being harassed by a bunch of bratty girls due to an unfortunate abundance of hormones.

But there is a part of me that believes many of these girls suffer from another hormonal imbalance—vanity. These are the mothers that pierce their newborn daughter’s ears because they want them to wear earrings. These are the mothers who feel their daughters are reflections of them and any imperfection must be stripped away lest they be seen as imperfect. Like this charming specimen:

“I had a mother who brought her daughter in, pulled up her shirt and asked us to wax the girl’s back. The hair didn’t seem to be bothering the little girl, but the mom was embarrassed and wanted it done,” Fisher recounted. “I told the mom to wait until the child wanted it, but she refused.” The girl, Fisher added, was 6 years old.

These are the women who don’t sit down and talk to their daughters about their changing bodies, telling them different is OK, that hair is normal, despite the images on TV and in magazines.

When my daughter comes of an age that looks start to matter to her, which by all accounts will be in about two years, I hope that my wife and I can sit her down and have that conversation.

But as I said before, she’s beautiful to me regardless of how she looks. And I will always make sure she knows that.

Image Credit: Flickr user littlepomegranate