my 5 year old girl swims everyday, plays soccer, basketball and tee-ball (one activity at a time and all when appropriately in season) and absolutely loves the pinkest sparkliest nail polish and lip gloss you can find. i, on the other hand, had never even painted my toenails until she showed me how, and prefer black, navy blue and khaki, so it's not like she discovered this stuff by modeling her behavior on mine. but i have embraced her overt girliness as something that we can share, like our own girl club, to the exclusion of her dad and little brother. though, to me dedicated spas seem a little over the top, i fail to see the overt harm in a little girl getting her nails painted with her mom or her fun auntie as a special treat if it's framed properly. because what's necessarily so wrong with a little girl (and by biological necessity a future grown woman) playacting as a mother or woman? since when did the idea of womanliness become associated exclusively with skankiness and overt sexuality? this mother and woman taught her daughter how to properly hit a baseball and bought her daughter the prettiest, pinkest batting helmet and bat to do it with.

do grown women really care about how other grown women choose to maintain their pubes? It's ridiculous to make this a political statement.

Thanks for the info. anonymous. If I ever become one of the "recently divorced" than I'll be sure to look for a man who is also "recently divorced" just to be sure our pubic areas are compatible.

In the meantime, I'll just continue to be amazed at some of the mostly pathetic and often sadly misinformed ideas about sex the terminally single seem to have.

Oral sex, shaving, and all that aside... not that it isn't interesting. :)

I have a few general questions about this whole girl/spa issue:

Does these girls (and their parents) have -nothing- better to spend their time and money on? Isn't there anything else that they can be doing -other- than sit with other girls and women learning about makeup and skin care and getting "pampered"? Is this "quality time" now? Is this what you do on the weekends in order to be in the "in crowd"? Is this considered hip?

If I recall, aren't spas a little pricey? You know, like twice the amount of a movie or a book? Or a picnic?

I'll be totally honest, I am envious of families that have this extra money to throw around concerning their physical appearance (be it on spas, clothes, shoes, or cars). But whatever happened to parents spending money on music lessons and tutors and schools in order to care for their children?

I'm lost as to how taking your girls to a spa teaches them anything other than how to spend money on a regular basis. Skin care? Seriously, you can honestly learn it from a book and a dermatologist - way cheaper but no social points there, right? Spa treatments are not permanent - you constantly have to go back for maintenance. The hair grows back, the polish gets chipped, the roots need retouching...

I think spas are nice for a special occasion, pampering for your birthday or whatnot - but, from my perspective, it's an extravagance. I worry that these girls having nothing better to do.

And I don't think this is a question of "my little girl likes to wear pink". Spas are not pink clothes and fingernail polish. Spas are a service, with a group of people that elevate you to "client" status, a "specialness" for attending. Do these girls have no other way to feel special in their daily lives? Is a spa treatment what their parents and their other friends feel they -need- in order to feel special?

* Oh yeah - and on the Thong Party thing (thongs on "ladies" or "sluts") - no no no, it's not about whether you're a slut or a lady for wearing one. I think that where the poster was coming from in the "not a lady" comment is the fact that, at least where I live, in order to get in for free, you have to be wearing a thong. And how would they know that? Well, you would have to show them, obviously; they aren't going to take your word for it. And does a "lady" show her underwear in order to get into a place for free? That's for you to decide.

...how the discussion of little girls' premature intro. to adult grooming has become centered on women's shaving preferences, especially in light of how, on the one hand, we seem to want to be "smooth down there" for aesthetic reasons, but resent it when the nurse wants to "prep" us for childbirth (when it is perhaps the wise thing to do for hygienic reasons).

"If men were encouraging their young sons to lift weights (never too young for a six pack!), wear cologne and gold necklaces the nation would go ballistic - we'd jail parents before allowing them to ruin their sons by sexualizing them and forcing them far too early onto the road of a vain, anxious, self-absorbed adulthood."

You have obviously never been to Brooklyn.

Just something that's always bugged me.

I'm mixed heritage and have the armpit and pubic fur that one would expect of an Eastern Woodlands-type Indian. (If you've ever read up on why American Indian men shave their faces. . .guess what? The reasoning holds for less polite regions, too.)

So I gotta ask. . .is anyone else irritatingly jealous of little White Girls with their irritatingly fine, blonde gene, just so cute, curling fur? This would include my best friend who once asked me "Why don't you just pluck the fur that would show when you wear your swimsuit?" And didn't understand why my husband rolled off the couch laughing when he heard it.

Okay, back to the original topic. I hate off-topic, but it was just too much to resist. I've had this on my chest for years and no appropriate forum to spew in. . .