Hair Removal & Self-Conscious Tweens
Hi Amy!
Long-time (long, long) reader. Happy anniversary!
I have one daughter who is wonderful, gorgeous, and so smart. She just turned 10 and is going through all the pre-period hormones and learning and feelings right now. One thing that has bothered her for a while is hair on her face (eyebrows and upper lip mostly). I always tell her “we’re mammals, we have hair and you’re clearly gorgeous!!” But sometimes I think “damn, it would be a 15 minute wax/threading appointment and I could take away this one bit of self conscious anxiety for her.” I’m not sure how to handle it! Do I take care of the hair and make her feel better? Or do I keep reminding her she’s human and normal and so so beautiful?
Thank you!!
It’s so, so tough to strike a balance between the way you WISH the world could be for your kids, and accepting the reality of the world they actually have to live in.
An example: My son recently picked out a new pair of sneakers on Amazon, a turquoise and orange pair he thought looked “super awesome.” But once they arrived I realized they were clearly a girls’ style shoe, and I just hadn’t noticed the distinction in the listing. As much as I want to let my kids be who they want to be and fight the gender stereotyping garbage and wear whatever damn sneakers they like…I couldn’t knowingly send him to school wearing girls’ shoes. I knew he would get teased, there would be tears, he’d come home and never want to wear the sneakers ever again, etc. So I told him that whoops, sorry, turns out those sneakers didn’t come in your size after all, let’s pick out another pair. I was more careful in my search terms this time, and he picked out an unmistakably boyish red and blue pair instead. The girls’ shoes were quietly returned unopened.
So yeah, of COURSE we want our children to accept their bodies and skin and hair as-is (and OP provided a photo of her daughter for me and let me tell you, we’re talking about a truly gorgeous little girl here), but…well, we were all kids and tweens and teens once upon a time. How did that go for everyone?
Most of us do SOMETHING that makes us feel better about our appearance — we change our hair color, wear makeup, wax/shave/thread body hair, spend a little extra on bras that make our cleavage look amazing, etc. And that’s okay! It’s nice to take care of yourself and be happy and confident when you look in the mirror. So if your daughter’s facial hair is really bothering her — and it’s clear you’ve fought the good body-hair-acceptance fight and assured her she’s normal and beautiful and all that — I would probably go ahead and let her have some control over this aspect of her appearance.
(Note that as a mother of all boys, I had to go do some Googling to make sure I wasn’t suggesting something universally frowned on or somehow dangerous for a girl this young. I found instead that this is a REALLY common dilemma for parents of tween girls, and many of them eventually come to the same conclusion that a quick wax is a small price to pay in exchange for a big boost of self-confidence and/or warding off potential teasing or bullying.)
I would do a small patch test on your daughter’s skin first (maybe try one of those little at-home strip kits for the upper lip) so she’s prepared for the sensation and make sure her skin doesn’t react badly. For the full job, make sure you’re taking her somewhere very, very good and very, very experienced. A benefit to waxing (vs. shaving/plucking) is that the hair will re-grow in a softer, non-stubbly appearance, and she might notice less regrowth in general over time. (And as someone who overplucked her own brows TERRIBLY in high school and is paying for it to this day, please keep the tweezers supervised at all times!) If she has super-sensitive skin in general, threading might be the better option — I’d really just go with whatever you do for hair removal (if you do either, that is), so you’ll know you’re taking her to someone you trust.
Yeah. It sucks that this sort of stuff starts happening when they’re still so young — you just want the happy, confident bliss of childhood to last as long as possible! But I think you’re right: You CAN remove this small bit of self-conscious anxiety for her. And you don’t want the self-acceptance talk to backfire and make her feel like she’s wrong for feeling self-conscious about a little extra facial hair. She’s beautiful with or without it, so let her look in the mirror and feel beautiful.
Photo source: Depositphotos/bst2012
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