"Do you want a Happy Meal after your wax?"

When I was a preteen, my biggest concern was how to sneak Oreos into my room. My, how things have changed.

Philadelphia magazine recently ran a story exploring the trend of young girls getting beauty treatments like waxing and highlights. It talks about the moms who bring their preteen daughters into salons for ... wait for it ... bikini waxes. Eight-year-olds. As the author points out, there ain't much to wax at that age. But the larger problem seems to be the values that these moms are passing on: "You aren't OK the way you are," "The most important thing is how you look," etc. Even though I would've killed for my mom to acknowledge that I might be interested in wearing makeup in middle school, part of me is appreciative that she let me make my own choices about stuff like that. She never mandated that I be thinner or straighten my hair (though if she could've steered me toward an iron it would've saved me a lot of agony) or told me I wasn't pretty enough, which is probably the subconscious message these girls are receiving.