Girls and manicures: How young is too young?

Tony Hawk sparks debate after tweeting a photo of his four-year-old daughter's sparkly nails.

By Charyn Pfeuffer - MSN Living Editor Mar 8, 2013 8:40PM

This week, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk raised all sorts of beauty bedlam when he tweeted a photo of his four-year-old daughter, Kadence Clover, painting her nails.

Hawk is not the first celeb to pamper his young offspring. Jessica Alba first took her five-year-old daughter, Honor, to get mother-daughter manicures in 2011.

It’s one thing to play in your mother’s make-up bag, but are spa treatments necessary or appropriate for children?

Some mothers claim it’s a bonding experience.

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Julie Novack, a working mother-of-three in New York, first took her daughter, Sadie, to get a manicure at age four. Now age 11, Sadie has weekly manicures with her mom.

“I am a working mom and therefore do not have a lot of time with Sadie during the week,”

Novack told MailOnline. “I do not want to take even more time away by going to get a manicure so I bring her along and she loves it.”

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Rosalind Wiseman, the author of “Queen Bees & Wannabes,” told The New York Times in 2008:

“Mothers and fathers do really crazy things with the best of intentions. I don't care how it's couched, if you're permitting this with your daughter, you are hyper-sexualizing her. It's one thing to have them play around with makeup at home within the bubble of the family. But once it shifts to another context, you are taking away the play and creating a consumer, and frankly, you run the risk of having one more person who feels she's not good enough if she's not buying the stuff.”

Still, in a recent survey conducted by Today.com, more than 50 percent of mothers polled said age 13 is acceptable for manicures; 29 percent said that age eight to 12 was okay, while 20 percent said under age eight was fine.

Read the whole story here.

Tell us: What age is too young for a manicure?

Bing: Outrageous beauty treatments

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Photo: Tony Hawk via Instagram, http://instagram.com/tonyhawk

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1Comment

Best

Mar 8, 2013 9:28PM

you do realize that most children that are "getting manicures" are actually just having their nails painted, which is what every little girl does at home all the time without anyone making a fuss.