Sweet & Sassy: Do Tweens Need Their Own Salons?

Earlier this week I was contacted by a reporter working on a story about a rapidly expanding chain of salons geared towards tweens called Sweet & Sassy. The images on the website look a little JonBenet to me, but it made me think about why it's so popular.

Tween girls are aging up faster. We've all read about how the age at which girls hit puberty continues to fall, but the impact of so much media and advertising on so many different screens at younger and younger ages is making young girls and tweens "aspirational" much earlier than in years past. The beauty industry knows this and exploiting this new potential market with loads of "personal care" products that will be marketed just to them. Instead of just playing with Bratz dolls, girls can now look like live Bratz, all dolled up.

Celebrity worship is having a huge impact on tween girls. I'm even not talking about the "trainwrecks" -- it's Hannah Montana, the girls in High School Musical, Zoey 101 -- they all require product to look like they do and they all talk about it in teen magazines (read by aspirational tweens) as well as celebrity weeklies like U.S. (also probably ready by tweens). These girls want to look like their idols -- and that requires product and professionals.

Kids and tweens live more heavily structured lives than past generations. They're busy with playdates, lessons and activities. Parents are no longer comfortable letting them go play outside unsupervised somewhere with the understanding that they will be back by dinner. These salons are a safe place where parents can drop off their tween girls and pick them up later. Sweet & Sassy is not about mother/daughter bonding through pedicures, it's about tween girls day out together. Just as Starbucks has become a safe hangout for teens to study and chat, these salons are another place that welcomes tweens, unlike many local malls, which have banned teens unless they are accompanied by a parent.

So are these salons a bad thing? I think it depends on how the notion of beautifying is communicated and parents' individual values when it comes to younger girls, make-up, nail polish, etc. Some parents pierce their kid's ears when they're babies or are perfectly fine with 7-year-olds painting their nails and playing "grown up." The reporter mentioned that when she visited the salon, there were girls from all different ethnicities there -- Latina girls getting made up for a Quinceanera. Girls seeing how girls from different cultures define beauty could be interesting.

But if going to a Sweet & Sassy is all about making yourself look better, then I think these salons are problematic. they also use the word makeover -- which implies you could look better. Maybe that's a concept adults can stomach when we watch the neverending stream of reality shows where people lose weight, get plastic surgery or have their closets overhauled, but I'm not sure that's a great message for 8-year-olds. The messaging I get from their website is that it's all about celebrating being "girly." This might also be problematic for some feminists -- then again so is Barbie, Disney Princesses and all kinds of tween girl-focused fare that represent stereotypical portraits of femininity.

What do you think?

Comments

[moderationsmuse]

First off, stop calling them "tweens." What is the contemporary idolatry of adolesence? It is a passage between childhood and adulthood, but a sexually-obsessed society (one fostered more by Democrat's ideology than the conservatives) turns its focus on youth and would have us be STUCK in adolescence for eternity. Not only are children, for some mindless reason, being encouraged to act like teenagers at the earliest possible moment, but people who should be acting like adults, including many people who blog here at Huff -- "Max and the Marginalized" comes readily to mind -- need desperately to grow up before they have wasted big, irrecoverable chunks of their lives.
A wise parent protects her kids from the Church of What's Happening Now and its worship of "cool." And the beauty lessons a mom ought to teach her daughter are things like these: kindness, self-respect, decency, friendliness, intelligence, integrity, honesty, and endurance.

[loril]

As the mother of a daughter, I would not give my child a "makeup day" at a spa with a friend until she hit the age we used to call "junior high" -- about 12 or 13. (And this would only be for a birthday or other special occasion. I would not instigate or suggest it, either. I would let her take the first step and express interest herself.) My daughter is 3 and I have never taken her for a professional haircut. I can handle it myself so far and it is another way for us to save some money. She has gorgeous hair and does not need even a "Kid's Cut" yet.

I see another problem with all these specialized products and businesses dedicated to a very specific age group. It is actually kills the positive side of "aspiration" -- that is stepping up to the next level of maturity and responsibility and earning a special outing to an establishment catering to grown ups.

Kid themed restaurants are fine, but they don't help prepare kids palettes and behavior for the next level-- restaurants that concentrate on the food rather than the mascot/arcade. Entertainment acts that are especially dumbed down to the young teen crowd do not allow the kid a chance to stretch intellectually or aesthetically. Even these kids clothing stores (the Jon Benet Boutiques) keep the kids at a certain level. Why not let them walk through a regular department store and mix and match some more innovative outfits that are not totally off the rack?

I am not the kind of feminist that rails against fashion and makeup (I am just the type who believed in splitting the check during my dating days.) If my daughter wants cute clothing and nice haircuts, I will enjoy taking her to get them within reason. I just think it starts too soon and the lack of taste and overall cheapness/­sluttiness often portrayed is creepy.

[Marioli]

I like those beauty-tips best that my mother taught me, and I.m looking forward to teach my (future) daughter how to take care of herself as a girl and how to grow up to be a woman. No beauty-parlor can fake this mother-dau­ghter-bond and there is so much more beauty and wisdom in it for both mother and daughter, beyond looks.

[LeftRight]

First, what a waste of money!! I wouldn't do it just from that point of view, but I think that you're asking for something different.

I understand why the companies are doing this, and I understand why the kids are doing this, but WHY ARE THE PARENTS DOING THIS? How could you do that to your daughters? How could you let your daughters do that to themselves? I was walking my dog just the other night, and I saw a group of 4 little girls, couldn't have been much older than my granddaughter (6) walking, wearing those sweat pants with words on the butt! If these little girls were older than 9, I'll eat my hat! It's just plain disgusting!