Oh my golly. I’m horrified. There are no words.
My daughter is almost 8, and she’s still working on remembering to brush her hair in the morning. Today I am very happy about that.
I wouldn’t count on this having a small readership. Not that it will be the next Harry Potter*, but the PR machine of the plastic surgery industrial complex seems almost unrivaled in its omnipresent messaging. And this is incredibly nefarious in its ability to condition the next generation of customers.
Hairy Potter and the Order of the Hot Wax? :dubious:
A bikini wax for an eight-year-old?
Words fail me. And that doesn’t happen often.
I can see manicures as a treat. And I’ve given my eight year old her own makeup box (better than her playing in mine - she also doesn’t always remember to brush her hair, I’m not really too concerned about her morphing into a pagent princess). And I can see a facial on occation when her face breaks out in a few years.
I cannot get my head around bikini waxes for tweens…
And then there’s omnipresent the “ain’t this weird/sick?” news and blog coverage.
I wish to point out that peer reviewed studies have found that better looking people make more money. Maybe mommy is just trying to give her career a boost so the kid can go to college or something? There are many reasons to want non medically necessary surgery, unhealthy amounts of vanity and poor self esteem are just a few of them.
I didn’t have pubic hair when I was eight. And I developed really early.
That’s insanity.
If I had any pubic hair when I was eight, it may have been one or two early ones. However, I don’t recall having any pubic hair that wandered beyond the panty boundaries until I was at least eleven or twelve.
I’m just a little bit horrified by all of this. Mommy doesn’t need new boobs, and little Susie shouldn’t need or want a perfectly neat landing strip until she’s old enough to drive/vote.
Definitely a good point, and it’s nice to have a framework for discussion, but this gets me:
In this context, it certainly sounds like a marketing and sales tool to me. And I find the mommy’s attitude disturbing.
I think if you can’t figure out how to talk to your kid about it, explain it so a child can understand…then maybe you need to think about your reasons, expectations and the reality of what you are doing.
Drugged up rhinoplasty mommy is gonna be scary, no matter what.
So you don’t have the personal relationship, trust and communication in place to explain and comfort your child in the face of the unknown or unpleasant and you think a book with happy shiny people in it is going to help?
Fine. Good luck with the stranger danger, sex, and drugs talk.
“Mommy doesn’t have the communication skills or personal relationship with you to explain this so you can understand…so here’s a pamphlet. And here’s the address to a chat room you can go to if you have any further questions.”
I know that’s a little harsh and black and white. Sometimes people dealing with “difficult” topics need a little direction to shape the discussion, but, something about this just smacks of the Lunchable Mommy culture, parenting by preprocessed packaging. Blech.
I was thinking about this too. If you can’t tell your kid why you want breast implants–and I would have a very hard time coming up with a good explanation–then it might be a good idea to examine just why you’re doing it.
Maybe it’s just that I can’t imagine explaining that to a child and not having it sound really horrible (absent some reconstructive reason or something). And if you sound really horrible when you do that, maybe it’s not a good idea.
…Or just ends up looking like a grotesquely deformed horse…
{SortingHat]“Oh Hermione…! No more Gryffindor for you. Off with you to Slytherin’…!”[/SortingHat]
Don’t worry. Cho will pull out a double-ended Steely Dan to save her…
“aloha-cherry…!”
Would someone please post a link directly to the illustration? My dialup connection loaded the top 1/4 and then spent twenty minutes downloading the 100+megs of animated ads.
Why does Mommy need big boom booms? Oh Honey! Mommy needs them to make her happy. Mommy feels happy when she makes other people happy, and everyone loves big boom booms. And a happy Mommy means you don’t have to stay in the car trunk, or be locked in the motel bathroom while Mommy is working at night. Now be good and Mommy will get you a bikini wax.
Reason #7512 I’m glad I don’t have children: zero time spent in pediatricians’ waiting rooms, anxious that my child might tire of Highlights for Children and instead browse a copy of My Mommy’s Labiaplasty or Daddy’s New Prince Albert.
OK, some people could use cosmetic surgery & such a book would be good for their kids, but I can’t really tell much difference between pre & post-CS Mommy in this book. Maybe if she was shown to have really saggy skin that wouldn’t firm up or a deviated septum, the book would be a bit less bothersome than it is.
He doesn’t have to walk through doors. Leaps them with a single bound.
Even that’s troublesome though, because it promotes the idea that funny-looking people are weird freaks that need to be sorted out.
It’s really quite an interesting phenomenon, because it’s a very fine line they’re trying to tread, and they’re treading it most awkwardly.
I wonder if anyone has written the probably very useful “Mommy had a mastectomy and may be bald for a year months.”
I don’t disagree with your facts. I might even like to give a book for that scenario a try: “Why Mommy’s years of experience in investigative journalism are worthless if she doesn’t have the figure of a 20 year old model-actress.” Society is going down a very troubling path here.