By BR Kellie
One of the best pieces of advice my mother ever gave me was to stay a child as long as possible, to not be in a hurry to grow up. At the time I paid little to no attention to it, because I liked being a child, and I was a tomboy, so the usual girl stuff, like pretty dresses and Barbie dolls, bored me. I enjoyed running around outside, playing ‘spies’ in the long grass across the road, hiffing clods of dirt and handfuls of sheep poo at my best mate. Grow up? Why would you? To this day I’m still not entirely sure that I am a grown up, despite having The Husband, The House, The Job, and The Blessed Child.
But times were different back then. We weren’t living in a world of Kardashians, and millions of avenues for advertising showing us the attraction of growing up faster. We didn’t have shoes with little heels, we didn’t have tiny t-shirts saying ‘bad girl’, we didn’t even think about makeup, other than our mummy looked really pretty on the occasion that they slapped some on and headed out the door to a Rotary function.
Now? Little humans can get whole kits of makeup. Mummy/daughter manicures are a thing. Pre-tweens can go on YouTube and do tutorials. And my little human, the anti-tomboy, is forever gazing up at my makeup stash wanting to touch, and try and play – and I have an issue with it. Which apparently, according to a recent study by Canadean, makes me the minority.
This study discovered that ‘baby beauty’ is a thing. A big thing. And parents are buying into it. According to their research Russian parents were the most conscious of their child’s image with a whopping 98%. The least concerned? Us Kiwis, with 53% being conscious of their little one’s image, and 47% not.
53%.
That’s over half of us parental types.
So what does being image conscious of your child even mean? I mean, I don’t want her wandering around looking like she’s been dragged through the hedge. I like her clothing to be clean for as long as it takes her to drop some icecream on her frock or run her sleeve through paint, and then I don’t care. She’s a kid - it’s her job to get dirty. I like the idea of her having her hair nicely brushed, but that’s a once in a blue moon occurrence. And I don’t like the idea of her wearing makeup. Well, at least until she’s 100 and I’m finally ready to let my Rapunzel out of her tower. But yet I’ve bent to her iron will on occasion, allowing her to have a little nail polish popped on because she couldn’t understand why I could gussy myself up but she wasn’t allowed. The first time I did it I felt sick. The second time I told myself to get over it, it’d crumble off in a day or two. She went through a phase of wanting her lips coloured in like mine, to which a clear balm was popped on. Again with the sick feeling. The only other makeup she’s played with is an Essence highlighter, which she rubbed all over her body, and I then threw out when she distracted.
The thing is, she knows about makeup, and that it’s something fun, and with a mother working at Beauty Review that’s kind of unavoidable. She knows how to swatch, and has a field day doing so – although she doesn’t see it as checking out colours, she calls it ‘making a rainbow’. So it’s not her growing up too fast, it’s her thinking makeup is for art (which is kind of how I see makeup when I use it, art and to cover up my skin’s imperfections.) Not that I plan on allowing her to paint her face anytime soon. Because she’s a kid. She’s a beautiful, fresh faced, innocent, divine little ratbag, that doesn’t need to own a cute palette of barely pigmented eyeshadows, or a kiddy-friendly nail polish.
It was noted in the study that if companies were to delve further into baby beauty that it should be propped to consumers as a ‘bonding experience’ and that, according to Canadean analyst, Veronika Zhupanova, by using ‘baby beauty’ as a bonding experience it can then help encourage a healthier approach to a child’s perception of their own image.’ Wait. What? Bugger that. I’ll bond with the little one by reading storybooks, by bouncing on the tramp, by baking muffins with her. She doesn’t need me to apply makeup with her to promote image positivity in the long term. She needs to know she’s loved - and I believe by spending quality time doing age-appropriate things with her, that will reflect in what she sees when she looks in the mirror as she grows older and knows she’s respected, loved and appreciated for being herself. Her image confidence will come from an inner strength, not by outside beauty.
I was talking to a friend about this research, and she had a different approach to me. When her daughter was younger she allowed her to play with makeup, because it was a form of creative play. And she said there was nothing cuter than watching her totter round in Mummy’s heels with bright pink splodges on her cheeks. I see that, I get that, I just can’t bring myself to go there with my daughter. What was interesting though was that she noted that her daughter’s friends now went to school with full faces of makeup, whereas her daughter wore nothing, or next to nothing. So perhaps there’s a lesson in that for me - that pushing too far one way could lead to a swing the other. Perhaps I need to remember that baby beauty is a bit like chocolate - a little bit won’t hurt, but if you deprive yourself you’ll eat the whole block eventually and make yourself sick.
Life, why must you be filled with so many shades of grey?
Still, I think for the time being I will remain one of the 47% of Kiwis who are not conscious of their child’s image. I care that she looks cared for. I don’t care for her to look like she’s anything more than what she is, a beautiful four year old with many years of an innocent and fun childhood in front of her – even if that means playing with dolls and not playing with sheep poo.
So do tell? What camp do you fall in? The ‘image conscious, what’s a little lipgloss or kiddy mascara gonna hurt’ or the ‘yeah nah, let a kid be a kid, she or he will figure that stuff out eventually’ camp. Did you dabble in makeup before you were a tween? Would you allow your own kids to play? Chat away…
Yeah nah I'm not a fan of little kids wearing makeup.