A Lolita in the
Making?
How to respond when your tween daughter wants
to wear make-up.
by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer
PARENTGUIDE News April 2005
Until about ten years ago, our 8 to 12 year
olds were seen as the easy ones. Now, however,
they seem in a big hurry to grow up, as if
childhood is no longer an acceptable place
to be. Our teenage wannabes seem driven towards
territory that promises a clearer purpose
and more excitement. They expect more freedoms
and are being increasingly targeted commercially,
which fuels pester power and makes parents’
lives harder.
Tween girls typically associate this more
attractive territory with wearing make-up
and using cosmetic products; it is the time
when girls fill their shelves with jars and
pots of various must-have potions and lotions.
How worried should parents be about this trend?
Should they step in to control it or simply
accept it as inevitable and allow it to happen?
How can they forge a sensible approach?
Let’s understand, first, why girls do
it. In fact, they’ve always done so—
pre-teen girls have always loved playing with
Mom’s cast-off lipsticks, creams, face
powders and eye shadows, dabbing and daubing
and wearing the smells as well as colors with
which they are so familiar. From this perspective,
it is one stage up from face paints, part
of dressing up. Indeed, tween girls are often
found teetering in Mom’s stilettos and
fancy tops whose straps fall ludicrously off
their slim shoulders. Playing at being grown
up and trying to imagine what it will be like
to be a woman or a Mom is very normal, natural
and healthy. The tween years are used to explore
and crystallize gender identity. Girls and
boys both reconsider how they should behave
given a new awareness of their difference.
Girls therefore play at being female (and
boys, male) to try on the role for size in
order to feel more secure about their future.
The significant difference now is commercialism.
Cosmetics and body fresheners are being packaged
and pitched directly at tweens. Smudgy cast-offs
are no longer acceptable, being replaced,
instead, by pristine, sparkly, plastic make-up
sets that contain the whole make-over works.
The big danger is that instead of helping
girls to feel confident and comfortable about
being female, this pseudo sophisticated version
of womanhood encourages them to focus on,
and often become dissatisfied with, their
individual facial features, hair, skin tone,
body hair and overall body image. It can feed
self-doubt— the demon that lurks in
all girls. Increasingly, it is not the growing
person inside that seems to matter, but her
looks; and looking good is the passport to
popularity, so important for this age group.
How should parents react when confronted with
a gaggle of girls over for the afternoon who
want to spend hours nail painting, coloring
their hair with lurid powders and smearing
mascara, and then going out looking like little
lolitas? And what if the next stage is your
daughter making herself up? Is there any point
in forbidding it?
Perhaps the best tip is not to forbid it but
to keep it firmly in the natural realm of
play for as long as possible. When the friends
come over, put out some old clothes—
even pick up some cheap gems from the thrift
shop— and suggest they create characters.
Suggest they represent different types of
women as they dress and make-up, perhaps an
opera singer, a particular celebrity, a doctor
or a head teacher or as Romeo and Juliet if
they know the famous pair, so they explore
images and styles rather than become intense
about their own looks. If they have dressed
up for fun, they can go into the street; but
if they have ‘dressed to kill’
they should learn that it’s experimental
and for inside the house only. That’s
the line to draw. Fun is fine but school is
school; the mall is for shopping not posing;
there is an age, time and place for everything
and wearing make-up out in public is not necessary
and not for now.
Emphasize constantly that it’s who she
is inside that counts, for you and others.
Tell her she is lovely as she is and needs
no enhancements. The cosmetic view of beauty
is not, after all, even skin deep. Taking
care of how you look is very different from
being obsessed with hiding wrongly perceived
facial flaws. In any case, time spent peering
into mirrors and smearing faces is time not
spent reading, imagining or being outdoors
making up games, all of which develop personality,
self-understanding and life skills that are
far more valuable than applying make-up.
But keep your reaction in proportion. It is
largely a phase that girls grow out of. Once
puberty arrives, skin condition tops the agenda.
If she is the only one who is not allowed
to play with make-up, perhaps you could lighten
up and let her spend her money on a few items
only, making your rules very clear about when
and where it can be worn. And while there
are, of course, possible dangers in girls
looking much older than they are, pedophiles
are rare, thankfully, and often target the
innocent.
·Individuality comes with maturity.
The younger girls are when they first express
themselves, the more they seek refuge in conformity
and fashion.
·
Help her to feel grown up in other ways so
she has less need to assert this through applying
make-up.
·
Always assume she can and will, not that she
can’t or won’t. Strong self-belief
helps her to resist pressures.
·Show trust and treat her with dignity:
she is a growing person who needs to rely
on her view of the world.
·Time and attention are worth more
than fancy gifts, especially of make-up sets,
so give of these generously.
·Limit conflict: when girls wear make-up,
they’re trying to anger their mothers,
not challenge them!
·Take the pressure off: love her for
who she is, not for what she can do.
·A happy home life is the safe haven
from which she will experiment confidently
and safely.
Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer is the author
of five successful practical books for parents,
including her latest, Talking to Tweens: Getting
it right before it gets rocky (Da Capo Press).
She also acts as a policy consultant, freelance
journalist and trainer in the education and
parenting fields, working with parents, professionals,
corporations and national research organizations
on parenting, self-esteem and mental health.
She lives in the UK with her family, where
she appears frequently on national television,
radio and in the press.
