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“Whoa.”
That was all I could say one January morning when my five-year-old daughter emerged from her bedroom with a full face of makeup – emphasis on full. She had been experimenting with the “real” makeup Santa brought her, seated at the miniature vanity she had pleaded for, one that looks just like mine.
Blue eyeshadow stretched higher than her eyebrows. Lipstick applied with cartoon-villain enthusiasm.
“So beautiful,” I started to say – then caught myself. She is already beautiful, of course. Joker-esque makeup – or no makeup at all – wouldn’t change that.
I’ve never steered my two daughters away from makeup, beauty products or self-care rituals. I find it cute when they sit with me, asking what this product does or where that goes. My eldest daughter has been coming to the nail salon with me since she was six months old. At first, she played with colour samples. Now, on special occasions, she gets a “princess manicure.”
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I like the ritual of it – sitting still, chatting, doing something intentional just for ourselves. Instilling that message matters to me: that self-care isn’t frivolous or vain, but necessary. That’s why I thought Rini – a company co-founded by Canadian actress Shay Mitchell, which makes gentle beauty face masks for kids – was harmless, even cute. The brand is hoping to create a world “where kids can dream, transform, and explore” with skincare, according to its website.
As a kid who regularly dipped into my mother’s night cream, I can see the thinking behind it. But the Internet backlash had other ideas: “I hope you got a chance to say goodbye to the plot because we’ve lost it,” decried one influencer over the products, beside himself that the brand would carry an after-sun hydrogel face mask for littles.
Of course, kids don’t need these products – but I can see mine doing a face mask together, on a Saturday girls’ night. And, of course, they don’t need makeup, either – but does anyone? Sure, maybe it’s the patriarchy or capitalism that makes me apply mascara each morning. But it’s also possible it’s a little thing I do for myself, with the added benefit of looking slightly less tired than I feel.
Not everyone agrees. I know many mothers who ban makeup and even talk of beauty in their homes, and for understandable reasons. For Lucia Alviz, a Toronto mother of an eight-year-old girl, any beauty product – makeup, nail polish, skincare – is off the table.
“She is naturally beautiful, and I need her to understand that,” Alviz said. She worries about the message that something external is required to enhance beauty, as well as the ingredients even in child-marketed products.
“I don’t view myself as prohibitive,” she added. “I view it as teaching her that there is a moment for everything in life – and right now, she’s a kid. I want her to enjoy her childhood, as an eight-year-old girl. I do not want her to be a kid pretending to be a grown-up.”
And yet, our daughters are going to learn about self-care and beauty one way or another – from their friends, or from commercials. The question isn’t whether they will encounter it – it’s who shapes the message when they do. According to Faith Comeau, a registered psychologist in Calgary who works predominantly with preteen girls, beauty products and makeup are not the villains.
“Makeup can truly be a wonderful form of self-expression – for girls and boys – even at a young age,” she said. “Sometimes doing those things together can actually be really wonderful and you can have special bonding time, doing nails or makeup together, figuring out what colours you like, and don’t like. There’s nothing inherently bad about doing that.”
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Problems arise, she added, when comparison happens. “We’re actually naturally inclined to compare,” she said, noting that evolutionarily, we were assessing potential threats and scanning for others who might have things we want. “But now we have kids who are staring at their screens, at all hours of the day doing nothing but comparing, and that’s where low self-esteem festers.”
Comeau has clients as young as 10 who feel ugly because “they wish they had better eyebrows, a smaller nose, and more expensive make-up and beauty products to help.” All as a result of what social media is feeding them, she said.
When comparison enters the picture, makeup stops being play and starts becoming pressure. “I wish I could tell parents, if your kids are saying these things, instead of brushing it off and saying, oh you’ve got great brows – get really curious with them. Ask about why they don’t like their eyebrows, ask about what eyebrows they’re seeing on social media, empathize with those feelings – why do you think other eyebrows are better?”
Engaging in conversation, “can help kids can answer those questions themselves,” she said. “They can realize that this is something social media is telling me is beautiful – but I don’t have to believe that.”
It’s a fine line between encouraging self-expression and self-care, while also letting kids know none of this is necessary. Turns out, my daughter somehow already knows this.
“Evie, can I do your makeup?” she asked her three-year-old sister as they ran upstairs to their room one day after school. “We just have to remember, okay? Less is more.”
Of all places, I didn’t expect sound beauty advice to come from my five-year-old. I lingered by the door, bracing myself for another villain-era look – and maybe even two.
Instead, I heard a conversation that made me say ‘whoa’ – in the best possible way.
“These sparkles make you fancy,” she told her sister, while carefully – and inexplicably − dotting glittery lip balm across her sister’s forehead. “You are so fancy now! But this doesn’t make you beautiful, sister, because you already are.”
