Thanks to Kristi of Interrupted Wanderlust for being this week’s contributing writer in the Up For Debate series. Kristi is a freelance writer and mother to a 13-month-old. She spends her days baby-wrangling, and her nights writing to afford her daughter’s high-priced Cheerios habit.

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Last month, a Sweet and Sassy franchise opened about a mile away from my house. What is Sweet and Sassy? It’s a salon and spa for little girls.

According to their website, Sweet and Sassy offers “a variety of spa-inspired services tailor-made for the toddler (yes, toddler) to ‘tween crowd.” They offer manicures, pedicures, makeup application, nail art, facials, up-dos, and several theme parties, including “All Dressed Up and runway To Go,” “Sleepover At The Spa,” and “A Night On The Red Carpet.”

My question is this: What kind of messages are kiddie spas sending to little girls?

Before I go any further, I have to admit that I have never visited a spa. My relaxation comes in the form of a cat curled up on my lap, Clive Owen on my television screen, and a box of Reeses Pieces at my side.

But I do know this: my daughter is only 13 months old (the “toddler” Sweet and Sassy is targeting?), but if in four years her best friend has her 5th birthday party at a kiddie spa, Isabella won’t be in attendance.

Sending a little girl to a spa in the name of fun is akin to hand-delivering her the message that she should derive her happiness from the way she looks on the outside, and not from those qualities that make her who she is on the inside. Kiddie spas also have the potential to set young girls up for a lifetime of appearance obsession and the continual pursuit of treatments to “enhance” their looks.

The last thing I want for my daughter is for her to believe that her flawless and soft skin isn’t pretty enough, and that it needs blush and eye shadow and lipstick to “fix” it. Or that her fingernails, with dirt caked underneath from digging outside, need to be buffed and filed and painted and adorned with “nail art.” Or that her hair, one-dimensional in color and straight as an arrow, needs highlights and pins and lots of hairspray to sculpt it into a grown-up do.


“There! We’ve completely changed the way you look. Isn’t this fun? Don’t you feel beautiful now?”

Taking a young child to experience beauty treatments originally intended for adult women turns little girls into pre-teens, pre-teens into teenagers, and teenagers into college students. All of a sudden 6-year-olds look like they’re 12, and 12-year-olds look like they’re 16. All of a sudden art projects and lemonade stands and soccer practice become “baby stuff” and kindergartners are slipping lip gloss in with their glue sticks and safety scissors.

Do I want my young daughter to school me on the merits of various makeup application techniques, and hair and nail treatments before she can even spell “mani-pedi”? I don’t think so.

The last thing little girls should spend their fleeting childhood worrying about are the widths of their eyebrows or the cuticles of their toenails when their greatest concerns should be whether or not they’ll finish their homework in time to play with their Webkinz. I want my daughter to savor her childhood, because all too soon, she’ll have these vanity worries, and others, as she’s forced to confront our beauty-obsessed culture head-on.

There will come a time when I can no longer shield my daughter from the image-centered world in which little girls are forced to grow up. Soon enough, the fragile self-esteem mothers try so hard to bolster in their daughters might be damaged by those who tell them they are not thin enough, stylish enough, or pretty enough.

But for as long as I am able, I want to keep Isabella safe from the images and messages that will soon pummel her at every turn.
Besides, if anyone in my household needs a massage, it’s clearly not the one of us snoozing for 12 hours each night, enjoying three healthy and balanced organic meals each day, and whose most stressful activity is a diaper change, right?

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