What age did DD start shaving? ** I LET HER SHAVE** UPDATE - Page 2

[~member~]

Originally Posted by Dar

I don't think anyone here has "made" their daughters feel ashamed of having hair.

I understand your point. It is the underlying message these young girls are getting, though, that has me concerned.

[Mamato2and2]

My daughter started shaving around 11. I was opposed to it (I don't shave very often) and she has blonde hair so you could hardly even see it and I didn't want it to grow in darker!!! But my mom and my sister were all for it, they didn't want her to get teased and all that...so alas she started shaving. Now that I look back, it wasn't really that big of a deal but I wish she would have waited. Kids have a lot of pressure and that was a battle I chose not to fight. Good luck in whatever you decide and I think the more we fight against it the more they want to do it...too bad society makes us feel like we have to shave!!

[MillingNome]

DD still does not shave very often. Every once in while she'll break out the electic razor for whatever reason. It's not a big deal around here whether she does or does not shave.

[EStraiton]

My dd is 12 and I just let her start this year. She could have done so a year or two ago but I didnt feel comfortable with it. She was ready and I explained to her how to shave by just showing her the razor and how to move it, etc. gently. I didn't actually 'show' her how to really do it... she did just fine without me. My mother never taught me and the first time I tried without her knowing I cut my leg badly... I didn't want that to happen to DD.

[Malva]

I was 12 when I started shaving. I discovered waxing around 16 and wished I had sooner. When my dd wants to start shaving, I'll introduce her to waxing.

[WNB]

Re: can't stop once you start --
I dunno, I'm sort of an on-again off-again leg shaver myself. Sometimes I feel like I want my legs to be hair-free, but most of the time I just don't care about it. I'm a fairly hairy person, and I'm not blond, so it's not that the hair on my legs is inconspicuous -- if it were, I doubt I would ever shave it.

I guess my advice would be to try to continue to make your daughter happy with what she is, but not to make too big a deal out of shaving. It is just hair, after all. If she wants to shave it off, no biggy. If she decides to stop shaving it off later on, also, no biggy. I wouldn't pile on a lot of pressure about how starting shaving is a major decision in life, once you start, can't go back, anything like that. It's just hair.

[sunnysideup]

Originally Posted by WNB

Re: can't stop once you start --
I dunno, I'm sort of an on-again off-again leg shaver myself. Sometimes I feel like I want my legs to be hair-free, but most of the time I just don't care about it. I'm a fairly hairy person, and I'm not blond, so it's not that the hair on my legs is inconspicuous -- if it were, I doubt I would ever shave it.

I guess my advice would be to try to continue to make your daughter happy with what she is, but not to make too big a deal out of shaving. It is just hair, after all. If she wants to shave it off, no biggy. If she decides to stop shaving it off later on, also, no biggy. I wouldn't pile on a lot of pressure about how starting shaving is a major decision in life, once you start, can't go back, anything like that. It's just hair.

ITA

[htw90]

I just asked my 13 yr old if any of her friends shave and if she wanted to - They all do but she doesn't care about it and said she'd do whatever I wanted. I have "issues" with hair (lots of dark hair - teased for hairy legs & arms) so I'm pleased to see she doesn't buy into any ideas on how she should look (she does have blonde hair so its not too noticable). Hopefully no one says anything bad to her!

[Ambrose]

Well I dont have a DD that age yet, but I was 9 when I tried it behind my moms back. Ended up cutting myself cuz she had those disposable razors... : After that I waited until I was almost 11 because that's when the comments started coming about hairy legs yadda yadda... Once I hit 14 I went from shaving almost religiously to shaving only in the summer/spring and found out that I wasn't the only middle school girl to not shave in winter. Once I met DH (I was 18) it slowly changed to me shaving very rarely... when I'm getting close to matching him in hair length!! or when I'll be wearing shorts or skirts.

I think over time if she really isn't too into it it'll trickle down to rarely or nothing like me.

Just let her know that she can, but at any time se can also stop and it isn't going to change who she is inside.

[Marsupialmom]

Shaving/hair trimming can have benifits MITBs. Hair can keep moisture closer to the body and if you are prone to yeast infection this can be a nightmare. I take pro-abotics but in the summer if I don't trim I get yeast infections. I nor my oldest daughter can sit in a wet bathingsuit either. When my brother was in the gulf he had to take up trimming his body hair to prevent yeast. And my dad came back from the gulf with a nasty yeast infection hair trimming might help prevent/tame but nobody told him.

There are many histories of shaving in different cultures and people have been doing it for thousands of years for different reasons.

[wtchyhlr]

I personally helped myself ot my mom's razor around age 11. Butchered my legs, she was appalled. I would say, teach her now how to do it safely.

That said. I'm fair, i have red hair and almost blond body hair. I went about 3 years without shaving in college. Never the armpits, because i didn't like the body odor, but definately the legs. These days, especially with a toddler that doesn't like me to shower... i shave pits daily and legs once a week at most. I've waxed (at a salon, never at home), and frankly, my skin is so fair, that i get a rash for a few days. Its also kind of pricey.

[Still_Snarky]

I was allowed to start shaving (with an electric razor) the summer before I started before sixth grade. Haven't decided yet about dd but she's only 2.5!

[Still_Snarky]

oops my first double post! :

[MissAbbyRosesMamma]

i fought and fought and fought my mom and then she let me so i didnt want to anymore now i do it when im gonna wear shorts or when i see the lion king reinacted on my knee. its a little scary then:

[sohj]

Originally Posted by Dar

I don't think anyone here has "made" their daughters feel ashamed of having hair.

Maybe no one is admitting it on this thread; however, I recently got to feel like someone socked me in the stomach when I was at a big gathering at a very crunchy friend's house and one of the other adults there was a mother of a girl who was friends with my friend's daughter. Despite appearing all "free" and "liberal" and being vegetarian and wearing hippie clothes, she was really nothing but a self-hating sexist who was inflicting her own psychosis on her daughter. She was making comments to the girl about her "stench" and how she ought to keep her arms at her sides so no one smelled her (I have a very acute sense of smell and all this girl smelled of was "little girl" -- you know, normal clean human scent). This girl is 7! And she was reminding her to shave in her bath that evening.

Why did I feel like I had been socked in the stomach by this? Because my mother did the same things. She also made me wear Mitchem's Anti-Perspirant, despite the fact it gave me weepy sores in my armpits. By the time I was 13, she was making me get my eyebrows waxed every two weeks, too. I stopped doing that when I wasn't living with her a mere handful of years later, but, despite over 20 years having passed, anyone looking at my face sees where the hair hair has never grown back.

Personally, instead of justifying mutilation of what our bodies have, I think parents of girls who are feeling "peer pressure" should be assisting them to resist it. Anything less is falling down on the job. "Just because everyone else does it" is not a sufficient reason.

And a to MITB for the history lessons.

[amydidit]

My mom never *allowed* me to shave. She said shaving was for *bad girls*. I still started on my own though and just hid the razors and all that. I started when I was 15 and couldn't stand the teasing anymore.

My DD is 9 1/2 and has been asking when she can start shaving. I've told her she can start whenever she wants too. I always forget to buy her a razor though, and she never reminds me either. She'll mention it every couple months, but doesn't seem stressed about it.

I would never push my DD to shave if she didn't want too. But I also can't understand feeling proud if she chose not too.

[Dar]

Originally Posted by sohj

Personally, instead of justifying mutilation of what our bodies have, I think parents of girls who are feeling "peer pressure" should be assisting them to resist it. Anything less is falling down on the job. Just because everyone else does it" is not a sufficient reason.

I'm willing to bet a hundred bucks that you don't have an adolescent daughter... and probably no older children at all.

I don't consider shaving to be mutilation, FWIW. Would you object to a daughter braiding her hair, for example? Or a son shaving?

And I don't know if it's peer "pressure" as much as a normal, natural desire to affiliate and belong to a group... and one of the ways groups show their affibinity is by looking alike. There are "fashions" in every circle, no matter how crunchy... be they mei tais or hanna andersson or blue hair or ponytails or shaving. Adolsecence is a time of finding where you belobg in the world, and group affiliation is a normal, natural part of this. I'm not saying that every girl should shave... but denying a girl the ability to do something that is considered part of being attractive to most kids her age seems unfair and unkind.

When I was 13, I wore horrid handmade pantsuits for a while because my mom made me. *Everyone* laughed at me. It was awful. I would never want my teenage daughter to go through that.

And I do think that what your friend is doing is wrong, wrong wrong... clearly it's wrong to make 7 year olds shave, or tell them they have a "stench". And it was wrong for your mom to make you wear ant-perspirant that gave youe sores, and to force you to wax your eyebrows.

OTOH,, I was very happy when my mom bought me a pot of eyebrow wax and showed me how to use it when I was 12 or so, because a lot of people had made comments about my eyebrows and I was self-conscious about them. My daughter has inherited the same brows, and she has a pot of wax, too. I guess I don't see anything wrong in doing things to our bodies that make us feel prettier. Women (and men) have done this since the history of humanity, and animals do it as well, so I think it's a fairly natural urge.

Dar

[MissAbbyRosesMamma]

Originally Posted by MamaInTheBoonies

From the replies, I am gathering no one has even questioned or researched as to why we have hair in the first place.

Or the history behind shaving and child sexual abuse.

the only female without hair, is the child female. I will not do that to my daughters.

i cant get this out of my head...i still dont get the link between shaving and sexual abuse. i read your explination but still dont get it. i shave my who-ha, is that also contributing to it? no, i have a tattoo that cant be seen with it being shaved and for my own personal reasons i prefer it that way. i cant stnad when my legs are hairy-i find it uncomfortable. no one made me feel bad about my body thats what i chose to do.


as for my eyebrows i get them done every two weeks and would LOVE if the hair stopped growing in. again, my preference. makes them more expressive i think, especially since i dont wear makeup or do anything else to my face...

[MissAbbyRosesMamma]

Originally Posted by MamaInTheBoonies

From the replies, I am gathering no one has even questioned or researched as to why we have hair in the first place.

Or the history behind shaving and child sexual abuse.

the only female without hair, is the child female. I will not do that to my daughters.

i cant get this out of my head...i still dont get the link between shaving and sexual abuse. i read your explination but still dont get it. i shave my who-ha, is that also contributing to it? no, i have a tattoo that cant be seen without it being shaved and for my own personal reasons i prefer it that way. i cant stnad when my legs are hairy-i find it uncomfortable. no one made me feel bad about my body thats what i chose to do.


as for my eyebrows i get them done every two weeks and would LOVE if the hair stopped growing in. again, my preference. makes them more expressive i think, especially since i dont wear makeup or do anything else to my face...

[a_work_in_progress]

I started using Nair when I was around 12 years old. I have some horrid scars on my legs, and I was always scared of cutting them back open. I never removed the hair regularly, though. I'm not against shaving. It's hair. When I want to get rid of it, I get rid of it. But for me, it's never to fall into peer pressure. I have hairy pits, and I wear sleeveless shirts, too. :P But, my body hair is blonde, and barely visible from a distance.

My oldest child is an 8 year old girl. Whenever she feels like she wants to remove body hair, I'll support her, and show her how to do it. Again... It's just hair. If my daughter wanted a hair cut, I'd take her to the salon. Why's it any different because the hair is on her legs?