HOT mamas aren’t the only ones getting waxes; now their kiddies are, too. That’s right, the newest trend in pre-tween preening is a wax job, with girls as young as 6 years old removing whatever hair they have – or don’t have – from their legs and armpits.
“You feel grown up and fashionable; it’s like getting your first haircut or nails done,” says 14-year-old Glynis Coyne, who will start ninth grade at Manhattan’s Marymount School next month. Coyne started waxing her legs when she was 8.
The reason she started so young, says Glynis’ mom, Monica Longworth, was she noticed her second-grade daughter was becoming “a hairy little girl” and that her blond hair on her legs was becoming a “bit too thick.” So Longworth made her a leg-waxing appointment at Wanda’s European Skin Care on the Upper West Side, where she goes for her own treatments.
Glynis says she was nervous the first time she got waxed, but that “it wasn’t exceedingly painful . . . sort of like having a Band-Aid pulled off.”
According to Wanda Stawczyk, who runs Wanda’s European Skin Care, the number of young clients coming to her salon has skyrocketed – from just two in 1998, to more than 200 customers last year. Juanita Martin, manager of the swanky Juvenex Spa – best known for its celeb clients and late-night spa treatments – agrees.
“We’re seeing younger kids coming to the spas with their parents,” says Martin. She estimates that Juvenex waxed 10 child-clients, ranging from 8 to 10 years old, this year. That’s compared to none five years ago. “I know other spas are also seeing younger children getting all sorts of treatments, like waxing,” she says.
TriBeCa’s Eden Spa waxed 20 pre-tweens last year.
“I have one customer who started getting her eyebrows waxed. She’s 6 years old,” says Eden’s manager, Evette Jiang.
Nair has even marketed a bright-colored brand of hair remover for “first-time waxers.” Called Nair Pretty, it’s ostensibly marketed to teens, but the packaging’s neon colors and cartoon figures appeal to younger girls.
Not everyone thinks pre-tween and tween waxing is such a bright idea. Many find it downright disturbing. “This is another example of how younger and younger girls are being sexualized and objectified,” says New York-based child psychiatrist Candida Fink.
Hair growth is a “normal part of becoming a woman. Take that away, and it has the potential to add to a lifetime struggle with appearance.”
Kiddie waxing, adds Julie Schaffer, director of pediatric dermatology at NYU Langone Medical Center, “sounds insane,” especially as children are more likely to experience side effects of waxing, including inflammation of the hair follicle and irritation of the skin.
But the most damaging side effect of all, she says, is psychological. “There are so many pressures on children these days, this is just not appropriate. Most [8- to 10-year-old] kids are oblivious to body hair,” she says. “It’s the parents who probably have the problem.”
For those interested in whether there’s even hair to wax, pre-puberty hair, called “velus,” is a fine, light pigmented hair. When a child hits puberty – which these days is happening to kids as young as 9 – the hair coarsens and darkens.
According to Stawczyk – whose clients, she says, include young dancers from the Joffrey Ballet School – girls should start waxing about 6, because the “virgin hairs are so fine that the roots can be removed permanently.” Starting young, she adds, saves devoted waxers upward of $3,000 a year.
Schafer, however, says there’s “no medical proof” that waxing at a young age stops hair growth because “no medical review board has studied it.”
Most spas have age requirements for waxing. Some, like Metamorphosis Day Spa in Midtown, refuse to wax clients younger than 16; others, like the Upper West Side’s all-waxing salon Max Wax, set the minimum age at 18.
SoHo’s posh Haven Spa insists that parents sign “child waiver” forms before performing any waxing services on minors.
But many other spas, like TriBeCa’s ritzy Euphoria Spa, Midtown’s Faina European Day Spa and the Upper East Side’s Ajune, leave it up to the parents.
“In 10 years,” predicts Stawczyk, “waxing children will be like taking them to the dentist or putting braces on their teeth.”