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This Brave 12-Year-Old Agrees to Be the Face of the Preteen Waxing Trend

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Yesterday, an e-mail arrived from Uni K Wax Center (which, it must be noted, provides very fast, clean, and relatively pain-free services, speaking from experience) advertising a 50 percent discount on waxes for girls 15 and under from Sunday through Wednesday throughout July. The offer, which is still up on Uni K’s website, states that “girls 15 and under can enjoy their FIRST waxing experience and find it NATURAL, SAFE and PLEASANT.”

Okay: Waxing is perfectly safe if done correctly, but natural and pleasant? Let’s not overestimate this “experience,” which is, at best, mildly uncomfortable and, at worst, a painful disaster. And personal preferences aside, no one can say that waxing is natural. It’s not. Lots of beauty procedures aren’t, but that doesn’t keep plenty of people from using them.

Anyway! Good Morning America decided to mount their own investigation of this much-discussed phenomenon of early-teen waxing and lucked out when they found 12-year-old Anna Dolgon-Krutolow and her mom, Carol, who agreed to visit Uni K together on camera. What followed was not so terribly different from Buzzfeed’s Gavon Laessig’s first pejazzling experience, minus the white wine and the rhinestones. We hope that Anna now feels more comfortable in her swimsuit, although now that her first wax has become national news, this seems unlikely.

Perhaps more compelling is Carol’s side of the story. Where does a mom draw the line between wanting her daughter to feel happy in her own skin and indulging a totally inappropriate request? Carol tells GMA:

[Anna] was very adamant, and she’s becoming a woman and she’s very concerned about how she looks, and it’s important that I listen to her.

Fair enough. On the flip side, a member of The Cut team was so traumatized after her mother took her for an upper-lip wax in the fifth grade that she didn’t even dare try an eyebrow wax until two years ago. (When asked if she wanted the treatment, she explained, “I sort of did but sort of didn’t, the same way you feel about shopping for your first bra.”) So, just like pretty much all first “experiences” that happen during one’s tween years, waxes certainly aren’t going to be “pleasant.”

Brave 12-Year-Old Is the Face of Preteen Waxing