A few weeks ago, while I was having a manicure, a woman walked into the nail salon with her daughter. The girl must have been seven or eight years old at the most. And I thought she would just read comics or play with her Gameboy while waiting for her Mum.
I was wrong. No sooner had her mother settled in when this little miss got ready to be primped and pampered.
She was there for a manicure-pedicure as well - a luxury I thought quite unnecessary for a kid her age.
Scrutinising her, I didn't think she was dressed lasciviously. But though she appeared as innocent as a girl that age would be, she seemed overly concerned with keeping her long hair in place and checking out her high-heeled slippers and handbag. It wasn't just the beauty treatment, but the whole exercise of dolling herself up that I thought was sorely out of place.
At that age, a girl should be crashing her bike, scraping her knees, jumping rope and hanging out with her peers. Not spending two hours at a beauty salon imitating the behaviour of women at least 15 years older.
But her Mum obviously approved of her little girl's demeanour. And watching them made me think of pushy Mums who rigorously train and prepare their little girls for beauty pageants.
In the United States where they have them, a Harvard College Research Program student found that parents had their kids fitted with false teeth in time for pageants when their baby teeth had fallen out. And girls had hair extensions and dye jobs to achieve the Barbie doll look.
I've been on the alert to tween behaviour since and noticed this new and subtle trend. It's the thought of their provoking unhealthy thoughts in latent or known paedophiles that gives me goosebumps.
Just as worrisome, as psychologists tell us, this obsession with body image in a little girl could so easily lead to depression and eating disorders like anorexia nervosa or bulimia.
The truth about little girls is that they start out with just one person in the world they adore and want to emulate. Their mothers.
It's in the power of every mother to influence, educate and inform her young daughter and lead her down the right road to womanhood. It's also our duty to show them how to avoid the dangerous curves.
This article was first published in Mind Your Body, The Straits Times on May 28, 2008.
