Rewind 30 years...... I am sitting in on the waterbed in the bedroom of my best friend's parents. We have pulled all the Playboys out from their secret hiding place (which, if I remember correctly was out in the open on the bedside table) and 3 8 & 9 year old girls are looking at pictures of naked women. This is the 70's."Sexy" women in Playboy in the 1970's had curves, natural breasts and - GASP - pubic hair. Looking at "retro" playboys now, I am comforted by the image of real bodies, natural, human, that look a good deal like mine.

HOWEVER, even at that age, I looked at the mangled bush between their legs and hated it. I didn't like it. Even though it was being presented to me as sexy and desirable. Even though my mother, an ardent (and hairy and kind) feminist paraded her naked body comfortably thorugh the house in all it's natural glory. I did not like the hair. Was it a tactile response? Was it deeply imprinted from some early childhood experience? Was it imprinted deeply on my DNA the same way that some people think cliantro tastes like soap or brussel sprouts are impossibly bitter? I don't know. The point is, at that young age I had been shown nothing but natural bodies, and while I liked them, even in the very beginning of discovering my own nascent sexuality, I hated hair.

Period. NO LIKEY!

Now, I have never demonized anyone for liking it. For wanting it. For craving it. I just quietly set about removing all of mine because I am happier that way. And I have listened to the slings and arrows and judgements of others in way that is no less shallow and demeaning than those that suggest having hair is gross. Dogmatic judgement from either side is the SAME, no matter how vastly superior your own side is.

It is GREAT and IMPORTANT to teach our daughters that they are beautiful, sexy, powerful, strong and WORTHY exactly as they are. BUT it is just as important to teach them that they have the right to define beauty and sexy for themselves.

When we say, "if you choose to alter your body you are degrading yourself, me and women in general," we are putting a pressure on them - to validte ourselves - that they do not need, cannot handle and do not deserve.

What we need to be teaching our children - male and femal - is that they have the right to be true to themselves, define their own lives and have their deepest beliefs and desires met with purity and passion. This issue of grooming is a small doorway into larger issues of being able to deviate from the media depicted norm and manifest an external world that jibes with your own internal world. Are you gay even though no one around you approves of it? Do you want to be a housewife? President? Media inhernetly presents 2 dimensional archetyps - our job as parents is to teach our children that there are more than 2 dimensions.

My daughter is rapidly approaching puberty. She knows that I have removed all of my hair because I walk around naked all the time. We have talked about it. She asked why, I told her that it was because it was my body and I get to choose what to do with it. She asks if she'll want to do the same thing, and I tell her that there is no way to know yet. But that when she is an adult and knows herself and her body, she can make these decisions for herself.

Is it working? I don't know. But I do know that she will say to me, "mom, i don't know if I'll marry a man or a woman." And I smile. She is keenly aware that "growing up" is a process of discovery....

These companies that are marketing bikini waxes to 8 year-olds are disgusting. Totally. Sites like Miss Bimbo make me want to hurl and move to Peru. Parents that dress their kids in designer clothes make me want to run naked (and hairless) through the streets screaming, "What The F*CK is Wrong WIth You People?"

But we have to realize that by being as dogmatic and vitriolic in our opposition to these things, we are still laying an equally narrow and shallow example for our children and they will believe that in order to please us, they must walk that same path and feel that same way. We are inherently making deviants out of them, even if all they are doing is deviating from us by expressing an inner desire that is as foreign and real to them as my early revulsion with hair was for me.

I went on too long, I know. But we mut be carfeul here. I felt guilty and bad and dirty for years. I believed that i was letting down women in general.... Even as I started a business as a woman. Won major awards. Raised a daughter. Published articles....

You cannot define a beautiful and strong woman by either the presence or absence of pubic hair. It's the same message on either side - I'm defining you by your crotch.

We're past that, ladies. Or should be.

___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE

Start Her Up: A blog for Women Entrepreneurs

Seriously, telling children they need to wax is insane. i'm not even sure i'd let her if she asked, but i guess i'll cross that bridge when i come to it.

But i do think that we need to be very careful in how we present choices to our kids. At every turn. I know that I have one dialog in my head while something bizarrely rational and compassioante comes out of my mouth.

Talking about things like, for example, the Spears girls (who are the all time best discussion starter ever for parents of girls, thank you, god or someone, for them!)  Whenever they come up in conversation I hear myself talking about choices and decisions and learning....  When what's going through my head are all sorts of things that are judgemental and cruel, however accurate. :)

As for waxing and spa days. Manicures etc... are one thing.  Kids have been playing "house" and "dress up" forever. It's modeling and they'll do it. But the things like waxing and dieting - that's adult behavior and needs to be explained as such. But explained as a personal choice, not one that has all sorts of societal baggage on it - and not good / bad / right / wrong. Just choice.

I totally agree with you. Really.  I just happen to hate body hair.

___________
Alyssa Royse
JUST CAUSE

Start Her Up: A blog for Women Entrepreneurs

Hint: Not into it.

Suzanne Reisman, Contributing Editor - Feminism & Gender
Campaign for Unshaved Snatch (CUSS)& Other Rants

I take a lot of heat for letting my daughter go whole-hog on the princess thing, but it's sad when the rest of the world makes a totally outdated view of womanhood look safer than the present one in some ways.

Surrender, Dorothy - When I was your age, we just let them ride in the back window.