Girls

In recent weeks, we've seen Jessica Alba take her daughter to the nail salon, and Gwen Stefani has been known to treat her sons to manicures, but how far is too far when it comes to childhood beauty pampering? Salons have been offering questionable services to young ones for years now, and the trend doesn't seem to be dying down. In fact, girls as young as 11 are getting bikini waxes. "I feel it's part of hygiene . . . when it's appropriate and they need to, they'll be doing it," Kelly Burrus, the parent of a middle-schooler, explained to Good Morning America.

And while there are treatments offered that aren't quite as shocking, such as the Shirley Temple blow-out at Drybar, the question still remains: how is putting such a great emphasis on beauty affecting children's self-esteem? "If you're telling your daughter . . . on a Saturday we're going to spend six hours at the salon getting our toes done and our eyebrows done and straightening our hair, what are we actually teaching her about what's important?" said Dana Edell, founder of Spark, a grassroots organization working to help prevent and end the sexualization of girls. Watch the video above to see more.

At this point, the well-worn "little girls are getting pedicures" storyline is nothing new, but as kiddy-specific salons and spas grow, so does the controversy. Most recently, the BBC reported on Chez Lulu, a Beirut salon for girls. Open since 2009, Chez Lulu provides hair styling, makeup application, and nail services for kids as young as 4 years old. Malak Mohammad, a sprightly 4-year-old, certainly seems happy as she has her makeup done, dons a pink wig, and gets a manicure (disturbingly, a UV lamp is used on those little fingers).

But Chez Lulu is only a small part of the mainstreaming of little-girl primping. Madison, the 5-year-old YouTube beauty guru, is closing in on two million video views, and the kids on Toddlers & Tiaras draw audiences with over-the-top pageant drama. Taken individually, there's nothing inherently wrong with a girl who tries on mom's lipstick now and then. What's troubling is the trend, reaching ever younger, for girls to value prettiness above all other qualities. Your thoughts?

Protestors of an upcoming Melbourne child beauty pageant have taken to the streets of Australia with signs reading: "Affection Not Perfection" and "Babies Not Barbies." They've asked that the government step in and apply an age restriction for the event, which will be run by the American-based Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant (of Toddlers and Tiaras fame) in July. Now those protestors have found allies in the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. See what the college chair had to say about the matter when you read more.

With new census data, India is once again under scrutiny for its unbalanced sex ratio. There are 914 girls for every 1,000 boys (under age 6), the lowest girl to boy ratio since 1947. This is a startling statistic when you consider the global average is 1,050 girls for every 1,000 boys, and there are countries like Latvia with a shortage of men. One way India has tried to remedy this is with stricter enforcement on abortions of female fetuses — according to a 2006 study there are an estimated half a million female fetuses aborted each year — but it doesn't seem to have made a dent in the stats.

If you're wondering why there are more boys than girls in India, it comes down to some of these reasons:

• Married Indian women are pressured to produce male heirs.
• Men are viewed as the breadwinners and family leaders.
• Girls require pricey dowries to be married (and most likely an extravagant wedding).
• Cheap and easily accessible ultrasounds make finding out the sex of the fetus easy, leading to abortions of females.
• Some wealthy Indians believe their status gives them the right to choose the sex of their children.

This cultural mindset, devaluing human life based on sex, has led to Indian girls being neglected and even killed. And with the help of modern technology, it's a scary path for the country. This may be a wake-up call for government officials to get more involved, but I really think unless there are some drastic changes within the culture, and possibly a rethinking of traditions like dowries, I don't know if a shift is possible. What do you think?

Recently, I saw this terrible article about a mom who is supposedly injecting her 8-year-old with Botox and giving her "virgin" waxes. Internet denizens are up in arms about it, understandably, and the story is showing up all over the place. Before we all call the Child Welfare Office, though, there are several things about this story that don't seem quite right. I did a little research, so to see why I have my suspicions, just keep reading.

GeoGirl, the forthcoming Walmart makeup line aimed at tweens, continues to cause a stir. Although some corners of the Web have been outraged by GeoGirl, this news clip instead focuses on two Oklahoma moms who aren't crazy about their daughters wearing makeup. "At this age," one says, "They just need to learn that they can be accepted for who they are, not how pretty they can make themselves be." Do you agree?