Shaving and girls. I'm looking for some opinions!

[davsand]

At Material Girl's softball game I got cornered by another Mom who is ALL pissed off because she found out the volleyball coach talked to the girls about hygiene last winter. I'm not sure why it is an issue at this late juncture, but I was trying really hard not to look like I wanted to laugh. Anyhow, in the course of that conversation this mom says she has been "fighting" with her 11 year old about shaving legs and underarms.

She then asks what is the sand family policy on shaving...

I told her that I figured it was up to Material Girl if she wants to shave and when she wants to start doing it. I told her that I had explained to my kid that shaving is a personal decision that everyone makes and that I had given my kid an electric razor to have if she ever DID decide to shave. (Sorry, I still flinch at the idea of that child with sharp blades of ANY kind...)

This Mom looked at me like I was some kind of Libertine or a "Mommy Failure" at the minimum. I have to admit that I personally am pretty lukewarm on the whole shaving thing, but I also figure it is gonna have to be my kid who does it and deals with shaving on a regular basis. It isn't like a tat or even a piercing--I think we can safely say this shit grows back pretty quick. Barring some horrible accident while shaving I doubt it will have too many long lasting repercussions.

So why was that woman all freaked out about this? Any ideas? How old were YOU when the issue of shaving hit your radar? How did your parents deal with it?

Thanks in advance for whatever insight you can offer here!



Laura

[AlCzervik]

1. wait, i don't understand what she was freaked about, that your kid shaves her legs or she

doesn't shave them?

[davsand]

2. She was freaked that I gave my kid a razor and let her decide the issue by herself..

At this point she shaves underarms but not legs--but the fact that I let her decide on her own just FREAKED this woman out for some reason.

I am still wondering WHY that woman was so freaked. Is 11 a young age to start shaving? I think I was shaving by then--but it has been quite a few years since then--ya know?


:shrug:


Laura

[Reverend_Smitty]

4. I think I started shaving right around then too

I think I was in the 6th grade. I just decided my legs were too hairy and you never want to give middle school aged children any extra ammunition if you catch my drift. I used a razor and shaving cream and didn't sever any arteries.

Puberty was extra fun for me because I was living with my dad at the time, so you could only imagine the conversations that I *did not* want to have with him. But I had a couple of aunts that lived nearby and they hooked me up with all the girly essentials at that age

[AlCzervik]

5. ok, i understand. My own daughter got my hairy gene so when she was about

12 or so she started getting some might hairy legs, like me, a gorilla in sweat socks, so she she asked me about shaving and i told if she wanted to start it was up to her, she decided yes. I went to the drug store and bought a few different kinds of razors, i filled up the tub, she put her bathing suit on (serious) and i showed her how to shave her legs, i did the first one and then she did the other one, i also went over the basics several times, especially using the right amount of pressure and having a light touch. Anyhow it worked out fine, no major cuts to report.

[bluesbassman]

3. My 12 1/2 yr old has been shaving her legs for about a year.

It was her descision and I think it improves her self esteem.

That other Mom is probably worried her daughter will go all "Britney" on her if she shaves.:crazy:

[davsand]

6. Going "Britney." There is a LOT of clothing snobbery at that school.

One of those kids (Not the one with that buttwound Mom) gave Material Girl a raft of crap for wearing a tie dye to school one day. The kid called it ugly and Material Girl told her that SHE liked it and that was all that mattered...

I am really not liking the whole social thing for young girls, I have to admit it. Sometimes i just want to pack my kid up and go live in the remote hills someplace where we will not have to DEAL with this crap.

Thanks for chiming in!


Laura

[bluesbassman]

10. I hear ya on the clothes thing.

My daughter used to get her clothes at Limited Too. Cute stuff, and they always have some kind of sale or they give you discount cards so the prices aren't too bad. Now she only wants to shop at Abercrombie or whatever the "hot" stores are. So I told her fine, I guess you'll be stylin' in that same pair of pants and shirt for the next six months. Of course I got "THE STARE". Kids, ain't they great?:banghead:

[Oeditpus Rex]

27. Tell her I live in Hollister

I'll be her hero. :D

[bluesbassman]

32. She'll love that!

I don't get it, Hollister is some kind of psudo surf clothing, but your guys aren't anywhere near the beach. What gives? :shrug:

BTW, I used to live in Salinas, spent a lot of time in Hollister. Still go down and ride at Hollister Hills from time to time. Great place.

Here's me and the clothes horse at HH a couple years back.

[Oeditpus Rex]

33. When/where did you live in Salinas?

I spent the first 42 years of my life there, mostly on the East Side. :hi:



I've only been to Hollister Hills once, when I was shooting photos for a story on it.

[bluesbassman]

34. 1980 to 1986

Lived on the North Side off of San Juan Grade Road. I was with BofA (tech) and covered from Gilroy to King City. Wife's parents are still there, go down 3 or 4 times a year. It was still kind of sleepy ag town when I was there, not so anymore!:hi:

[Oeditpus Rex]

35. Bolsa Knolls?

She Who Took My Virginity lived on Penzance. There's a traffic light at San Juan Grade and Russell now. :)

[bluesbassman]

36. Man, there's lights all over that town!

Takes a half hour to get across town now.:grr:

I wasn't that far up. Had an apartment at the Villa San Juan, then a doublewide at the Lamplighter.

[Oeditpus Rex]

37. Gotcha

I used to know someone who lived in the Lamplighter, someone else in that other park on Bolivar and someone else on Cleveland.

Oh, and it seems like half the people I've known lived at The Circles at one time or another. One night I was leaving there, drunk, and I went around three times before I found the way out. :D



"It's a small world — but I wouldn't want to paint it."

—Steven Wright

[LeftyMom]

7. Some parents seem to think that they can forestall their daughters' puberty through force of denial.

:shrug:

[davsand]

8. I bet those are the SAME ones we call Grandma and Grandpa, too.

I dunno, I could be wrong about this, but denial seems like a REALLY bad idea to me...

Now, refusing to let the kid date until she's 45--I'm good with THAT, but she really does need to know the basic stuff like the birds and the bees, physical development, and anatomy before it becomes an issue.

Gawd, maybe I really AM some sort of radical Mommy.



Laura

[LeftyMom]

9. I almost pointed that out. Kids who are infantilized and repressed go nuts when they finally get

a little freedom.

[LibraLiz1973]

16. Truer words have never been spoken

I was a little wild as a kid- not a total case, but, I had fun.
I look back at it and see it as a time when I got it all out of my system.



I had a friend who's mom had VERY strict rules.
Curfew? 10:30pm.
No phone calls after 9
No boys
No dates
No sleepovers unless you were sleeping at her house.
Not allowed to go out after school

This went on until she graduated high school.

After that, my friend went crazy. having sex with all kinds of AWFUL guys, doing MAJOR drugs (acid, shrooms, coke) and just really losing control of herself.
She went a little crazy and tried to kill herself. Ended up married to an Amway salesman. Went nuts again & got divorced.

She's fine now- mostly. But I think her life would have been very different without such strict guidelines.


I thank god my mom was progressive enough to give me some leeway.

[AlCzervik]

11. you're not radical, you're a good parent. My daughter's science class watched a film

about birth, they were learning about reproduction and some of the kids skipped it, their parents didn't want them seeing the movie. It wasn't porn, it was natural childbirth.

[davsand]

17. I watched a frat boy faint during a childbirth film.

He went FACE down--desk and all--when they did the episiotomy. I just about got thrown out of class for laughing so loud because that guy had been a complete ass the entire semester.

I could not get into ballroom dance so I took sex ed for one of my PE requirements. I took personal defense the next semester because ballroom dance was full again.

To this day I can't dance but I can beat the crap out of you or explain some of the better documented perversions if I'm so inclined...

---
Anyhow, back to the subject, I am amazed at parents and how wound up they get about this stuff. Seems like if it involves sex, reproduction, or the genitals in ANY way these people completely fall apart.

This mother the other night was just livid that anyone at the school had dared to talk to her kid (as part of a team, mind you) about personal hygiene. Totally blows my mind.



Laura

[AlCzervik]

19. that mother has some issues and she's going to pass those right along to her daughter

if she doesn't wake up.

[LibraLiz1973]

13. Ha ha. Funny story-

My mom did NOT want me to shave- she kept telling me to wait.
But I was annoyed that I was the last of all my friends to begin doing so...
So that summer when I went to vacation with my grandparents, my grandmother bought me a razor & some shaving cream.
Thank goodness not all grandparents are locked in the stone age!! I loved her for that.

[LibraLiz1973]

12. That mom has some issues.

I started shaving right around that time as well-

[mcctatas]

14. I think both of my girls started shaving around 10ish....

Now if I could only get them to remember to wash out the tub when their done, the first day of shorts weather it always looks like someone shaved a Yak in there!

[Oeditpus Rex]

25. Sure it wasn't a llama?

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/llama



:D

[otherlander]

15. I shaved my legs for about a year

starting when I was 14. Then I just kind of stopped. I've only shaved them once since then, for the prom a few weeks ago. And now it'll probably be another few years before I shave them again. I don't see what the big deal is, either. :shrug:

[davsand]

21. Yeah, I stopped shaving for about 20 years.

I met and married my husband without being shaved. Never posed much of an issue, and I figured it wasn't really any body's business.


I dunno, when you get to my age and the varicose veins are popping up the whole shaved leg thing just doesn't matter as much somehow. You gotta figure, I wear shorts and pants with elastic in the waist, shoes with velcro in them and my body parts are feeling the pull of gravity. Somehow the whole leg thing just isn't a big deal to me.

For you, otherlander, however, I am very happy to hear you are at home in your own body as you are naturally. It sounds lame as hell, but we ARE all created in beauty, and it is important to remember that. You are a smart woman, I can tell.


Laura

[otherlander]

22. Thanks, man. Er, woman.

:D

[Schema Thing]

18. People are idiots who don't so much want to truly protect children

as much as they want to project their every belief and arbitrary societal whim on them.

[Blue_Roses]

20. I have a nine and eleven-year-old

daughter, but my nine-year-old is the one that is "sprouting" under her arms. She has dark hair while my older daughter has red--big difference. Anyway, I got some "Nair" sort of product a Sally's Beauty and it works great. It goes on like a deodorant stick and she wipes it off with a warm rag. We don't have to deal with the razors and she feels much better about lifting her arms in the pool and elsewhere.

Denial doesn't work. Believe me, I tried until I saw how it was affecting her self-esteem. As much as I hate to see her grow-up so fast, I don't want her to feel bad about it either.

Good luck! :hi:

[davsand]

28. That self esteem thing was what I was concerned about.

I've noticed that others have brought it up in here in a lot of different ways and I am glad to see it. I just am boggled by the pressures put on kids right now.

It isn't just a matter of clean clothing or decent shoes--it is the RIGHT stuff with the "proper" label. It isn't a matter of going to school clean and deodorized it is about makeup and body hair and hairstyles. (Makeup in Middle School??? I'm like WTF is up with that one because i still don't wear it--it gives me hives. Thankfully that has not come up yet except that one of the other girls wears it every day...)

Seems like there is this wide swing between parents letting them out dressed like little baby Brittany's with crop tops and hip huggers and parents that refuse to accept that their daughters are ever gonna mature. I'm just scratching my head here. HOW do you protect your kid and their self esteem when this crap is all over the place?

:shrug:


Laura

[dropkickpa]

23. I was maybe 14

I am blessed by fairly sparse soft leg hair, and much of that is red, so not really visible. I shave (rarely) simply because the darker hair isn't evenly distributed and my legs look patchy. Poor Dropkid, at 7, looks like sasquatch. I don't want her to start shaving or some other method of removal at this point (though it is enough to irritate her if she wears tights, long socks, tight pants, etc), but I may bend in the next year simply for her comfort and self-confidence. She's only recently mastered the art of washing her own hair correctly (hers is difficult, it's almost to her butt and THICK), so I am hesitant to introduce another self-care routine that's as complicated as hair removal. I had originally told her I thought 10 was the earliest I'd bend on the de-hairing.

[OmahaBlueDog]

24. Father of 2 daughters

This is an issue that Mrs. OBD & I'll probably be dealing with really soon.

As for other mom looking at you like you're a libertine; hey -- if she wasn't prepared to hear advice she didn't want, she shouldn't have asked. Your approach sounds reasonable and sane.

I would like to ask a question. My older daughter got Mrs. OBDs eyebrows, which are thick and tending toward unibrowdom. She doesn't want to do waxing (sounds painful). At what age can one appropriately get laser hair removal?

[AlCzervik]

26. see if you can find a place that does eye brow threading, it sounds weird but works

really, really well and it doesn't hurt. I am a long time waxer but i switched over to threading.

here's a video, it's not gross.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK-QzPLgUTo

[OmahaBlueDog]

29. OK -- I'll look around for that

Thanks!

[davsand]

31. Yeah, I'd echo the threading suggestion.

Threading can sting a little bit but I think waxing is way worse (remember--waxing takes off the top layer of skin too!) I get my eyebrows done at a kiosk in the mall. They also do henna tattoos there and I love those so I'm a regular. (Henna is a temporary body art sort of thing. It is a plant based stain applied to the skin and it fades in a couple of weeks.)

I have zero ideas about permanent hair removal for the offspring, but I have to say that I'd want to be VERY sure that whoever did it was really good at it. Those would be some awful scars to deal with if anything went wrong.

Good luck!


Laura

[galledgoblin]

30. you did the right thing

my mom basically sat me down one day and gave me a razor as well as pointed out where the various products I'd soon find I'd need were.

I can't remember when I started shaving, or when I stopped. but I do remember that little talk and the way it just took a lot of stress and embarrassment out of the entire puberty situation.

[davsand]

38. I have tried to be real matter of fact about this stuff.

I always thought that me making it some HUGE drama only makes it a bigger deal than it already is for her--ya know?

I am seriously bummed that my "baby" is growing up so fast--but when I'm rational, I also realize that them growing up is EXACTLY what this whole process is supposed to be about. If my kid doesn't change and grow, then I am screwing this parenting thing up completely. I can't imagine that any parent would want a toddler not to grow and progress, and I have NEVER heard anybody complain when that baby starts sleeping thru the night. Hitting puberty is one more growth thing for a kid and I can't get my head around why some parents just freak out so BAD about it.



Laura