How young is too young for Botox? We’d like to think any age is too young to justify injecting your face with a poisonous substance to smooth a few wrinkles (and turn your face into and expressionless mask that looks older than it would if you just left it alone) but even fans of the treatment will probably agree – eight is just too young.
Britney Campbell, an eight year old aspiring pageant queen who lives in San Francisco, and her mom, Kerry, don’t think so. They appeared on Good Morning America this week to talk about their reasons for putting Britney through her extreme beauty regime.
Britney’s comment on the Botox was, “It hurt sometimes, but I get used to it.” The waxing was another story, “It was super, super hard to deal with that…I just don’t think it’s ladylike to have hair on your legs.” Lady like or not, the pain of the wax was too much for the child, who says she doesn’t want to try it again for a while. Considering that she is not even close to being old enough to worry about being lady like, we can only be glad that she’s decided not to start ripping the hair off her legs with hot wax just yet.
Kerry confessed that her daughter didn’t actually ask for the extreme treatment, saying, “We talked about it. She didn’t exactly ask me about it but I know that she was complaining about her face having wrinkles and things like that.” GMA’s Lara Spencer replied with this pointed, and very true observation, “My son will come home and tell me he wants every Xbox game that existed…that doesn’t mean you get it for them.”
You especially don’t give your child whatever they want when what they want so clearly puts them on the road to a bad case of body dismorphic disorder and any number of other psychological issues. It’s hard enough to have a good body image and be a young girl, playing into a child’s concerns over wrinkles at age eight seems like an invitation to disaster.
