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I have a question for all the pre-teen parents out there: When is makeup okay?
I've been volunteering at a public school, working with grade 4-5 girls. I'm making a website to help kids do better in school (the school I'm working at has kids that are consistently below grade level, so I was super excited when they went nuts over doing addition problems!!), and I'm getting some kids to test it out.
Anyways, the site lets the kids have an avatar, like a little version of themselves they can dress up (they earn coins by competing "quests" in math, language, etc), and they absolutely love it. They're constantly asking me for new items, like puppies or pink skirts or fairy wings or... makeup.
They want their virtual self to wear makeup. They're 10. Is that okay? I was a bit dumbfounded when they asked the first time... and now they've brought it up several times since. Should I cave to their requests? Would you want your kid on a website that portrays them with makeup? So far their avatars have been very child like (there's a picture of one on here if you want to see: http://thinkellie.com/academy) so it might be kind of weird to mix in the makeup?
Am I making too big of a deal about this?? I'm only 22 and it sounds like I'm not quite ready to deal with being a parent haha so I'd appreciate any advice!!
My mother would have never let me wear makeup at 10. So while I struggled with it, I let me 10 year old wear makeup. At 14 it has lost it's appeal. I say worry about what's on the inside, what friends are like, what they are committed to - the rest falls into place.
You are asking 2 different questions. Makeup on a computer avatar is different than make up in real life. I wouldn't allow or encourage a 9 or 10 year old to wear makeup. I would only encourage some foundation when they are older if they have an acne issue. I don't see putting makeup on an avatar as a big deal.
I think I have to agree. We have fun making our avatars for Wii games and other places and makeup is just one more fun thing to play with like hair bows, glasses, haircuts, etc. However I would definitely not be OK with letting my 11 year old daughters wear makeup. They have shown absolutely no interest in it and that is fine with me. Now if I could only get my 29 year old daughter to wear a little lip stick every now and then I'd be happy!
I'd pass on it. There is no reason at all to encourage or indulge 10 year olds in envisioning themselves doing things that they are too young to do in real life. Let them stay children for a bit longer. They have the rest of their lives envisioning themselves doing things that they are too advanced for their age.
It might make sense to ask some of the actual parents if they want their child making themselves up (via computer) with makeup. If the parents don't care, I guess it's not a big deal. But I think little girls (which is what they are, no matter how fast they want to grow up) should be encouraged to see themselves as the age that they really are. Although, it's probably just me because I would not have my 10 year old walking around in these tiny mini-skirts that I see either so maybe I'm just not "with it."
I let have let my 10-year-old play with makeup from the time she was six or seven. She didn't wear it out of the house most of the time, but sometimes she would wear lipstick. I didn't bring it up to her; she would just help herself when she wanted to. She will now occasionally want to play "makeover" with me or with her friends, and she's allowed to do that. (She can use blush, powder, lipstick/gloss and eyeshadow. No mascara or eyeliner, because I think it's an eye injury waiting to happen when you're talking about a giggling preteen.) I really don't see it as a big deal. It's the same as them wanting to paint their nails, put on earrings, wear a dozen bracelets, wear sparkly shoes. Not appropriate for school, but if they want to wear it to the grocery store, who cares?
I let have let my 10-year-old play with makeup from the time she was six or seven. She didn't wear it out of the house most of the time, but sometimes she would wear lipstick. I didn't bring it up to her; she would just help herself when she wanted to. She will now occasionally want to play "makeover" with me or with her friends, and she's allowed to do that. (She can use blush, powder, lipstick/gloss and eyeshadow. No mascara or eyeliner, because I think it's an eye injury waiting to happen when you're talking about a giggling preteen.) I really don't see it as a big deal. It's the same as them wanting to paint their nails, put on earrings, wear a dozen bracelets, wear sparkly shoes. Not appropriate for school, but if they want to wear it to the grocery store, who cares?
^ This.
For me it comes a bit close to the whole women shaming other women over the way they dress thing. I refuse to judge other women for the way they look, and encourage my daughter to do the same (however hard it may be at times). If women or girls want to wear make up, it has nothing to do with me. I'm not going to assume to know why, or impose my standards and opinions on them. I never wear makeup, my daughter loves makeup. It doesn't make her slutty, "trying to be adult", or anything. It just makes her a kid wearing makeup, and she enjoys it.
I think that is quite normal for kids to dress-up, put on make-up, etc. Part of growing up! Doing that would be fine with me.
As for wearing make-up daily, that is a DIFFERENT situation as it is not cheap! It would take a LOT of pleading, begging, and manipulating to get ME to fork over the money for that! (Seems to me there are a lot of other more important things to be spending money on.)
There were make-up dolls back in the 1950s, according to a doll collector in my family whom I consulted, vaguely remembering something about this. They looked and were dressed like little girls, but came with a full supply of lipstick, eye shadow, eye liner, etc. Also included was a sort of lotion to remove the mess.
The doll collector, who's close to my age and who received her make-up doll when she was about nine, says she had a great time drawing and redrawing the doll's eyebrows to change its expression - surprised, sad, angry, etc. She herself didn't wear make-up until she was about twelve, and then just powder and Tangee Natural, a lipstick which changed color from orange in the tube to a raspberry color. I can remember it being very, very popular with the girls in my class about the same time - ugly, but popular (and very affordable on a seventh grader's allowance). But she sure did enjoy putting gobs of makeup on that poor doll!
Seems pretty similar to putting make-up on an avatar. My guess is that these children's avatars get changed pretty often, anyway - last week's fairy wings give way to this week's lipstick, and who knows what will be trendy by next week?? So - let the kids experiment, but ask them if they think the avatar really looks like them with full make-up. That may not be their object, of course - just playing with the avatar's appearance is probably much more fun than trying to create an accurate self-portrait. It sounds to me as if it's more of a "this is what I'd look like if..." activity.
It's an avatar...what better than an avatar to practice applying make-up on..In grades 5 and 6 a lot of the girls in the public schools where I live are already showing A LOT of interest in make-up. I think letting them see it on an avatar might stem their curiosity...I can't see how it would hurt.
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