Pamper parties for children

I was with my 8 year old GD yesterday. She already takes an interest in clothes. Her mum is very stylish. I’m sure she would love a pamper party but she would equally love something sporty or adventurous. She spent all afternoon practicing her tennis against the wall and doing cartwheels and handstands. Everything is fine in moderation.

I'm not a great fan of this pamper stuff - but I don't find it shocking or there being any more to it than enjoyable fun.

I would think pass the parcel and suchlike too young for a 9 yr olds. More suitable for 4 or 5 IMO.

paddyann54

Yammy you can do just as much harm by trying to keep them too babyish.Girls nowadays dont play with dolls at 9 ,and most dont play with lego ,theres absolutely no reason to think we should mould them the same as their mothers were moulded.The post upthread about wee girls playing at cleaning and with baby dolls is very outdated..playing at houses or shops is done and dusted by 6 or 7 in my experience and theres nothing wrong with that .
My oldest GD 's other granny bought her a very expensive silver cross dolls pram ,it was never played with she was 7 .She was great on a computer though much more useful in 2022
I'll repeat what I said before ,pampering is just self care ,having manicures and pedicures and haircuts is not making them grow up too soon nor is it sexualising them .

A child wanting to play with a doll at 9 is not 'babyish'. A 7 year old preferring to play with a useful computer than a doll's pram isn't necessarily progress.

Yammy, you made the point the man exposing himself outside the comprehensive school was waiting for the youngest girls to come out. I don’t expect they were ‘encouraging’ this by wearing nail varnish.

It’s a myth that flashers ‘only want to shock’. Like other behaviours, it starts with the fantasy, builds to being practiced. The thrill of frightening their victim can reach the point where exposing themselves is no longer enough. They may follow their victim. They may escalate and sexually assault or rape.

I don't like the idea of pamper parties,either but I am old and we had a different set of values about that kind of thing. My daughters would have laughed their tomboy heads off if I even suggested such a thing but a couple of my granddaughters would probably like it ( they like to make my face up with oodles of eye makeup and lipstick and they think it is hilarious).

I'm sorry for your experiences Yammy but I don't believe painted nails or make up play any part in child abuse or exhibitionism.

I think you're right.

I know little about the dark world of child abuse or paedophilia but from the information that's available it's obvious, when you consider that very young children, even infants, are among those poor little souls abused - that painted nails and make-up do not play any part in their abuse.

I can understand those who are worried that very young girls might be under pressure to become 'mini-adults', but to suggest pamper parties are some kind of forerunner to provide victims for child abuse, just doesn't ring true.

To answer your question,yes I have been flashed at ,but I was in my late 20's and out running in the local park .Flashers generally just like to shock I was told by the local bobby

Yammy you can do just as much harm by trying to keep them too babyish.Girls nowadays dont play with dolls at 9 ,and most dont play with lego ,theres absolutely no reason to think we should mould them the same as their mothers were moulded.The post upthread about wee girls playing at cleaning and with baby dolls is very outdated..playing at houses or shops is done and dusted by 6 or 7 in my experience and theres nothing wrong with that .
My oldest GD 's other granny bought her a very expensive silver cross dolls pram ,it was never played with she was 7 .She was great on a computer though much more useful in 2022
I'll repeat what I said before ,pampering is just self care ,having manicures and pedicures and haircuts is not making them grow up too soon nor is it sexualising them .

Yammy

Glorianny

Yammy

All just adding to the sexualisation of what would once have been considered young[little] girls. No wonder they attract the wrong kind of attention from predatory men and do not have the skills to cope with it.
My nearly teenage GD got a voucher for the Lego shop she was thrilled.

It isn't "sexualising" anything to learn to take care of your skin and paint your nails. Or are you saying the only reason women paint their nails is to attract men? I'm still painting mine and I can assure that isn't why I do it.

I paint mine as well but I would not have let mine at an early age.
Have you ever been the victim of a Flasher or some one who chose to masterbate as you and a friend walked past? I was. I was shocked my friend realised he was waiting for the youngest girls to come out of the near by Comprehensive, phoned the police and he was arrested.
We set our children up to be the victims of such types when we dress them as mini me's but they are too young to explain to what they might encounter and how to deal with it.
Take care of your skin by all means personal hygiene is paramount but leave the paint and the mini adult things until they are old enough to have the coping strategies.

I'm sorry for your experiences Yammy but I don't believe painted nails or make up play any part in child abuse or exhibitionism.

Glorianny

Yammy

All just adding to the sexualisation of what would once have been considered young[little] girls. No wonder they attract the wrong kind of attention from predatory men and do not have the skills to cope with it.
My nearly teenage GD got a voucher for the Lego shop she was thrilled.

It isn't "sexualising" anything to learn to take care of your skin and paint your nails. Or are you saying the only reason women paint their nails is to attract men? I'm still painting mine and I can assure that isn't why I do it.

I paint mine as well but I would not have let mine at an early age.
Have you ever been the victim of a Flasher or some one who chose to masterbate as you and a friend walked past? I was. I was shocked my friend realised he was waiting for the youngest girls to come out of the near by Comprehensive, phoned the police and he was arrested.
We set our children up to be the victims of such types when we dress them as mini me's but they are too young to explain to what they might encounter and how to deal with it.
Take care of your skin by all means personal hygiene is paramount but leave the paint and the mini adult things until they are old enough to have the coping strategies.

Well research would disagree with your view Summerlove and consider these organisations harmful.
They have been outlawed in some places.

Times change.....and we change with them....my 6 yr old GDs last party was a pamper party...they all got given matching PJs when they got there which they all changed into and they had a face paint artist who did their faces....gave them 'tattoos' and the mum of the birthday girl did their nails ...they all loved it .....they came home with a goodie bag of scented lip balm....sheet of tattoos....hair slides...bag of haribos and slice of cake.....my 3 GD also like pass the parcel and musical bumps but parties like this are few and far between now

Vintagejazz

Going back to the beauty pageants, I wonder how those little girls cope when they grow up. The vast majority of them will not have a future in fashion modelling, but their school work must surely suffer from the time they devote to preparing for and travelling to these pageants. Also do they get any time to develop other interests and talents?
Their parents seem to be teaching them that all their worth is centred around their looks. That must be very damaging long term.

The ones I know are smart women doing extremely well in their chosen fields. Those fields have nothing to do with the beauty industry.

You’d never know they’d been “pageant queens”

Your views are extremely outdated and harmful.

Vintagejazz

I agree with a lot of what you say Dickens.

Re your last point I think children mature on the outside much quicker now, but much more slowly inside.

I heard it described once as putting a cake in the oven at too high a temperature- it cooks too quickly on the outside and as a result it doesn't get a chance to cook properly all the way through.

I heard it described once as putting a cake in the oven at too high a temperature- it cooks too quickly on the outside and as a result it doesn't get a chance to cook properly all the way through.

I think that sums it up perfectly!

In all seriousness, I think - as far as children and young adults are concerned - social media can have a far more damaging effect on their lives than pamper parties for girls. Not to mention their easy access to porn, and the ubiquitous use of the iPhone camera - with boys demanding girls provide naked photo's of themselves. And both sexes sending spiteful and hurtful messages to - and about - each other. I'm really not sure how prevalent this culture is - but my NDN's daughter told me some hair-raising things about messages passed back and forth. She'd also been a victim and developed an eating disorder, which might have been connected.

Kids - looking on the outside as though they're 'cooked' and done...

I agree with a lot of what you say Dickens.

Re your last point I think children mature on the outside much quicker now, but much more slowly inside.

I heard it described once as putting a cake in the oven at too high a temperature- it cooks too quickly on the outside and as a result it doesn't get a chance to cook properly all the way through.

Kids every generation enjoy different activities. It is that simple

Assigning a dark motive and consequences based on your fears is catastrophifizing

GrannyGravy13

A pamper party for a birthday (birthdays are once a year) does not mean that for the other 364 (365 in a leap year) that children cannot climb trees, ride bikes and or ponies, make dens, splash in rock pools, help Dad/Grandpa with DIY and get as grubby as they like etc. etc it’s a couple of hours.

There is so much over thinking on this thread…

Pamper parties are now a 'thing', and quite a few parents organise them for birthdays and treats, weekend activities, etc, so it's not necessarily a one-off for any child.

However, I'm sure these parties don't automatically turn little girls into a 1950s "Lolita", but they do emphasise at a quite an early age the aspect of 'looks' and beauty in a woman's life. Considering how young schoolgirls are often judged by their appearance by fellow students - both boys and other girls - it's hardly surprising that some have reservations about these parties. There have been instances, too many, of bullying of girls who are deemed to be too fat, or 'ugly' even - with children sending them vile text messages, to that effect. Was it always like this? I don't know. Are we putting too much emphasis on appearance - for girls, this doesn't seem to apply so much to boys? I don't know the answer to that either. But young girls do seem to be very self-conscious about their looks these days and worry about their appearance in a way I don't remember doing at that age. Do these parties contribute to their anxiety? - who knows. I don't.

But the question has been posed by the OP, and inevitably people will have a view - some will just automatically dismiss the whole notion as either a bad thing, others will see it as harmless.

But I think it's wrong to assume people are "over-thinking" on this thread. Young girls - and even boys - have committed suicide because of bullying about their appearance... rare, but it does happen. So I don't think it's over-thinking to give the matter some consideration when the question has been posed.

Personally, I'm fairly neutral about the issue. In principle, a young 9 year old painting her nails and having her feet massaged for a couple of hours along with her friends seems harmless enough. On the other hand, if such sessions become so mainstream that they are almost a rite of passage, I think it's not a bad idea to question their validity, if it means that we are placing a burden on girls to be admired for their appearance rather than their abilities.

The odd thing is that, in some ways, children seem not to mature as quickly as we had to when we were growing up... they certainly stay in education a lot longer. Yet you still hear people saying that they "grow up too quickly"!

Glorianny

Not to mention so much prejudice- if you like make up and pampering you must be sex mad., can't enjoy anything messy or active and are a certain sort of girl or woman. I thought we killed those ideas long ago. Isn't that why there are athletes and successful women selling skin products now?
My DGD likes lip balms, creams and lotions that smell good, nothing to do with how she looks or any other ideas.

Sex mad??? Who said that?

Not to mention so much prejudice- if you like make up and pampering you must be sex mad., can't enjoy anything messy or active and are a certain sort of girl or woman. I thought we killed those ideas long ago. Isn't that why there are athletes and successful women selling skin products now?
My DGD likes lip balms, creams and lotions that smell good, nothing to do with how she looks or any other ideas.

A pamper party for a birthday (birthdays are once a year) does not mean that for the other 364 (365 in a leap year) that children cannot climb trees, ride bikes and or ponies, make dens, splash in rock pools, help Dad/Grandpa with DIY and get as grubby as they like etc. etc it’s a couple of hours.

There is so much over thinking on this thread…

I agree. Then you have these nine years old parents saying ‘my kids are growing up far too quickly’ - now you know why. I remember still playing with dolls at this age!

I'm just thankful that I didn't have a 'girly' girl - mine was, like me, horse mad and spent all her time wearing jodhpurs and covered in muck. I never ever dressed up in my mum's clothes or shoes or tried on her make-up, and my daughter was the same. While I don't have a problem with pamper parties for kids per se, I do feel it just adds to the whole culture nowadays that seems to a woman has to look 'perfect' at all times. With social media etc, they're under enough pressure now without adding to that at an ever earlier age.

Most imaginative play that children enjoy is copying adults, cleaning, cooking, driving, and baby dolls to name a few.

Children seem to enjoy these parties, I do. Not see any problems.

Children will emulate their parents. And an array of make-up in the adult bedroom is a honey-pot for fun and experimentation. And, from experience, I can tell you, not only for girls. As I discovered when the 'war paint' lines on my son's face exactly matched the colour of my diminishing lipstick.

I wish, though, that little girls might also imitate their fathers sometimes... helping out in the garden shed fixing things or doing a bit of carpentry.

An uncle of mine, with whom I spent a lot of time as a child, owned a business making drays and other pieces of farm / home equipment. He encouraged me to experiment with off-cuts of wood, nails, glue and paint. And he allowed me and my friends (both sexes) to have a corner of his workshop to play in.

I'm not averse to pamper parties - but the drinking of pretend Prosecco I think is a step in the wrong direction. And I'd like to think that little girls can have their imagination stretched beyond the idea of looking pretty and cute. If they want to play with mum's dressing-up box on a rainy afternoon and enter the world of make-believe, that's one thing, but deliberately orientating them towards being a 'pampered female' on a regular basis... I'm not so sure that's a good idea. They'll need more armament than that when they enter the adult world.

... but that's just a personal opinion and I accept that it's an individual thing.

Zonne

DiscoDancer1975

they don’t give a damn about what the child is wearing !! What planet are you on?
I know two women whose husband’s have been arrested for paedophile’ activity’. Seeing what the children were wearing, and what these men were looking at...was the first thing the police were drawn to.

I’m not disputing this is what you (or the wives) were told by the perpetrators, but this isn’t really how the police track online paedophilia.

It is, however, one of a plethora of victim blaming excuses paedophiles use to ‘justify’ their belief that children are sexually aware and willing.

Exactly. Ask anyone who ever arrested, prosecuted or attempted therapy with these men