The mom's comments made my little heart just hurt "wow, without all that hair on your face you look much better.." Way to potentially set up this sweet, cute little girl for a lifetime of feeling ugly for looking normal. My mom started "fixing" my hair when I was 8 and now at 30, I can't stand to be without a relaxer.

Awww...that poor little girl! I've waxed before, but I'm a grown-up! I would never try to force that sort of thing on a kid.

Welp, that's pretty messed up.

Wow. It's shocking to realize how early we start indoctrinating girls into beauty standards -- and how young they are taught that without products and procedures (pedicures, manicures, extensive hair products, makeup, etc.) they can't be "beautiful."

I saw a blog once written by a girl who works in a salon doing hair, eyebrows, and other beauty treatments. She had a mother bring in a little girl around Brooklyn's age for an eyebrow waxing, and she struggled with how to handle the situation because she felt the girl was too young for this procedure. The salon owner tried to help handle the situation, saying the little girl's eyebrows needed to "look age-appropriate" (i.e. not waxed) instead of pushing the girl to meet adult beauty standards... which are troubling enough in themselves. This also reminds me of a good friend of mine whose parents (!!) offered her breast enhancement surgery for her high school graduation. When she said she wasn't interested, her parents became angry and said she would change her mind in the future. I know that these parents want "the best" for their kids; they want their girls to be accepted by their peers and lauded in society for their looks. But I remember as a girl being so self-conscious of my weight, my clothes, my hair... and I wasn't even exposed to the idea that eyebrows mattered. I wish we wouldn't put so much pressure on girls (and women) to meet unattainable standards.

AWESOME!!! that girl is gonna be so fucked up and have beauty/body issues when she gets older.

Wow, how unethical. I remember wanting my eyebrows waxed at a young age. However, a lot of reputable salons refuse to do it to young girls (usually under 12) because the skin there on children is so sensitive and thin that it can tear. :/

I was in 5th grade when I first asked my mom to start waxing my legs, because other kids were making fun of me. I didn't grow up to have a messed-up view of my body, either.

That little girl's situation seems very different, however, in that her mom seems to be the one encourageing the procedure, and that her eyebrows seemed perfectly fine beforehand.

Ugh. I can't imagine forcing a little girl to have her eyebrow hair ripped out.

Mom tried to make me girly. In HS, she would claim that some of my favorite teachers - who were customers of hers - would say that I was looking "very nice" if I was wearing gobs of makeup and spending an inordinate amount of time on my hair in an attempt to reinforce her opinion.

At 11, she told me that I was "starting to get a bit of a tummy." That was the first time I ever felt fat, and I still resent her for it.

To this day, I'm "unfinished" or "incomplete" if I don't wax my eyebrows (she started making me do that at about 15 because I have a tiny, damn near unnoticeable unibrow,) wear makeup, and I "look grownup" only if I wear 'nice' skirts instead of the jeans and geeky t-shirts I generally prefer.

I guess I'm just okay with not being a "whole person" according to her and society.

My bf has expressed that he likes my attitudes regarding makeup and hair-care. Mom says he's "full of shit." Whatever.

What a horrible scene! Some people just shouldn't be allowed to become parents. Some parents are so frustrated with their lives that they want to use their kids to pursuit their dreams. Cause she is not pretty she teaches her daughter she must do anything to look like television and magazines tell she should. It is really sad that such a little girl feels so compelled to suffer to achieve a ideal of beauty. And she is so pretty! How could her mother say she doesn't look that good with her natural eyebrows? It broke my heart.

I wonder how much of this ties in with the beauty pageant culture that is out there, and how much is the mother trying to live vicariously through her daughter's beauty pageantry.

I other words, why is this mother making these choices, because she apparently doesn't think that it's wrong.

This is so sad. How much hair would such a young blonde girl even have there? I'm not saying it would be better if she were a brunette, but did she even look any different before?? The mom's comment about her looking so much better after was so unnecessary either way ...

As a child, I heard plenty of times the Spanish saying "para presumir, hay que sufrir" (to boast, you must suffer).....

I'm almost still a child myself, and I honestly don't see why children doing awful things to themselves are so much worse than when grownups do. it Adult women may think that their beauty rituals only affects themselves, but little girls WILL copy them. I really don't think anything will change for the girls before the women give up their beauty rituals.

It's also a bit hypocritical to claim that these self-destructive standards are okay for grownups and horrible for children.

This makes me love my mom even more. She was completely against me doing any more grooming than just brushing my hair and cleaning up.

When the girls/boys in school started teasing me about not shaving my legs my mom was completely against me shaving, still. I snuck a razor to my "friend's" house anyway and shaved. My mom grounded me...This was the 6th grade so I was 12. Yep...not fair.

I think there's a large class component here as well. From what I understand from watching the show, while pageants are horrifically expensive, the families themselves are not particularly wealthy, and most seem to come from a lower-middle class type demographic. I think it's a form of class aspiration for many mothers of contestants; in the same way that another mother might put her child in ballet or piano to become "cultured," these mothers quite often feel that competing in pageants allows their children to gain attributes that they associate with better prospects later, and that they are as a result doing the "best" for their kids (I think actually the expense and the beauty-intensive labour contributes to this sense, since parents feel they are really making a sacrifice for their daughters.)

I would call it child abuse, but I can't think of any reasonable way to intervene without making things worse. Maybe an age requirement/standard for such things? It would be nice if scientists studied the ill effects of these kinds of things more (not a lot of money in that field) so that one could say, it's unhealthy because...

what is she like 8? why would someone consider ripping out a beautiful little girls eyebrows already? we have our whole lives to worry about extra eyebrow hairs.