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My daughter has that lovely sort of tawny-colored hair that goes blond after prolonged exposure to sun and chlorine. And despite my best efforts to slather her with sunscreen all summer long, her skin is currently quite tan. This confluence of events resulted in a horrified shriek from the backseat of my car one day a couple of weeks ago -- my 9-year-old had realized that she had hair on her legs. "Mom!" she screeched, "I'm all... hairy!"
For the record, she is not overly hairy by any stretch of the imagination. (Yet. I should probably apologize in advance for what lurks within her gene pool.) But blond hair against brown skin is more noticeable than her usual combination, I suppose.
I responded as best I could, telling her that everyone has hair on their legs and she is no hairier than normal. She seemed unconvinced, and asked how old she'd need to be to start shaving. I said we'd discuss it when she gets to middle school, and she nodded and seemed satisfied.
I'd forgotten about it, really, until I heard that Nair is now marketing to girls as young as 10. Have you heard about this? The insipidly-named "Nair Pretty" is for "first-time hair removers," and that apparently extends to girls still in elementary school.
Feministe wonders if anyone really believes kids are this dumb:
And their ad campaign is all about how “empowerful” it is to have smooth legs when you’re a pre-teen.
Their ad campaign is also really pathetic:“I am a citizen of the world,” reads the ad copy. “I am a dreamer. I am fresh. I am so not going to have stubs sticking out of my legs.”
Um. I know ten-year-olds are ten and all, but do advertisers think that they’re also illiterate and innately drawn to non-sequitors?
Bridget Crawford at Feminist Law Professors points out that girls that young being interested in hair removal is hardly new, but she finds the Nair Pretty advertising language troublesome:
What surprises (and disturbs) me about the Nair ads is that consumerism is being packaged as self-love and self-determination. In addition to the “I am a dreamer” text quoted in the New York Times article above, the ads also proclaim, “I am pretty. I am determined. I am going to make a difference. I am unique. I am fresh. I am not going to settle for sandpaper skin. I am who I am. I am unstoppable. I am pretty.”
I like the “determined” and “going to make a difference” angles, but what does that have to do with being “fresh”? Fresh like young? Fresh like inexperienced? Fresh like impertinent? Fresh like virginal? Fresh like a baby, not the adolescent girl with thickening leg hair? I like the image of a great nation of girls proclaiming, “I am unstoppable.” But you can be unstoppable — at any age — and have hairy legs. And what precisely is the injustice implied by “settling” for “sandpaper skin?” If a girl or woman doesn’t like stubble, a depilatory cream may be preferable to shaving. As stance, however, refusal to “settle” is better suited (in my mind) as a response to substandard education or lack of access to health care.
[...]
Making a difference and being determined don’t have anything to do with hair removal.
Feministing is also zeroing in on the language of the campaign, though in this case first we have a bit of light-hearted fun-poking:
The Nair Pretty marketing scheme is half hilarious, half terrifying. Hilarious because of the obvious attempt to speak to young people in contrived slang:
It's not that you're obsessed or anything but maybe you've noticed that the hair on your legs (and other parts of your body) is just a little bit thicker and darker than before. Chill. You're growing up...it's all good.
I almost expected the next line to be about "getting jiggy" with hair removal.
This is immediately followed by a much more serious observation:
But it's still terrifying because the message of Nair Pretty is that you can't be pretty unless you're taking care of that unsightly leg (and everywhere else) hair.
Oh, right. That.
Sarah Et Cetera muses that it's not the hair removal itself at issue, here:
Those tweens and teens, the logic seems to say, should be outside playing games or at least not inside worrying about their leg and pit hair! And they sure
