Trend: Pretty Babies

Lauren Albert, spa director at Rescue Rittenhouse Spa, says mothers frequently bring in their daughters between the ages of 10 and 14 for various waxes, nail services and facials; she’s booked more than one Sweet Sixteen spa ­extravaganza. Some moms even present their naked-faced ’tweens to Nives Riddle, Rescue’s award-winning and Vogue photo-shooting makeup artist, for early lessons in makeup application — you know, lest they learn the tricks of eyeliner by haphazardly painting it on Elvira-style a few times. Moms are also setting up pre-bat mitzvah spa treatment series for their daughters. “It’s not just to get them ready for their big party,” says Albert. “It’s like, ‘Okay, you’re becoming a woman now, here are the things you’ll need to do as a woman.’” 

Except, of course, they’re not women. This new, unstoppable desire of mothers to pluck and paint their daughters has created an unexpected conundrum for spa owners and aestheticians, who can’t afford to lose the moms’ lucrative business — but who also don’t want to be partners in crime. When moms book appointments to get their preteens waxed at Pierre & Carlo European Salon & Spa inside the Bellevue in Center City, owner Joseph Cutrufello makes it a point to run through with them exactly what will be happening to their child (read: pain, sweating, high ­probability of ensuing red bumps on young, sensitive, not-in-need-of-a-wax skin). At Bernard’s Salon & Day Spa in Cherry Hill, it wasn’t enough to simply suggest to moms that it’s not the best idea to apply harsh chemicals to the scalps and hair of their six-year-olds just to make their hair “more blond.” “We’ve flat-out told mothers that highlighting such a young girl’s hair is a bad idea, and something we’d rather not do,” says Carla Ciociola-Toppi, the spa’s marketing director. “But so many mothers push anyway that now we have them sign a waiver.” The waiver basically states that the spa prefers not to perform various services on children, that the mom understands this, and that she decrees it happen anyway. “It’s so weird,” says Ciociola-­Toppi. “It’s like they’re stage moms.”

In an effort to appease their ­consciences and avoid complicity, spa owners have gotten more creative, offering up palatable alternatives to moms intent on turning their daughters into eight-year-old Heidi Klums. Maurice Tannenbaum, who owns OMG Salon & Spa in Gladwyne, hawks an all-natural product to moms who want to lighten their five-year-olds’ locks; applied daily, it brings out subtle highlights. He has also drawn a line in his salon. “I had a mother once ask me to relax her 12-year-old daughter’s beautiful, wavy hair,” he says. “I just refused. I said absolutely not, that’s ridiculous, and turned her away.”

At the Phoenix Salon & Spa, on the bottom floor of the luxe Phoenix condo building in Center City, owner Sarah Keating finally drew up a waiver to deal with the constant influx of ’tweens (often the children of building residents) coming in — unaccompanied — for facials, highlights, waxes and massages. Some girls are in so often that they request specific spa employees. Keating recalls the day she informed one mother, who wanted to drop her 12-year-old off for a full body wax before a modeling casting call, that it wasn’t going to happen unless she, the mother, came in, signed a waiver, and sat with her daughter as any wayward hair that dared to grow on her adolescent skin — from head to toe — was ripped out.

SO WHAT'S BEHIND this surge of hyper-groomed mothers creating little spa-warriors in training? I catalog my own Main Line childhood: Did my friends and I sprout hair in places where hair had not previously been as we entered the double digits? Yes. Did we have lighter hair in the summer from frolicking on Avalon’s beaches, and duller hair in winter? Yep. And yes, we stressed over trying to be the best at sports and music and dance and school, and trying not to be the victims of middle-school girls’ cattiness. But did our moms shuttle us to high-end spas for corrective waxes, highlights, massages, facials and makeup lessons? What? Absolutely not. No one — not us, not our moms — even suggested it.

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