Fact: Eleven-year-old girls are the tackiest people on the planet. They are like little drag queens dipped in glitter, covered in rhinestones, wearing stone-washed denim, tucked away into a sparkly purple Polly Pocket case covered in rainbow unicorn stickers. Terrible, and a phase we still haven’t outgrown. So it wasn’t surprising for us to read that Lexi, an eleven-year-old sixth grader from North Carolina, wanted her hair straightened and filled with a lot of dumb highlights. We were even less surprised that her mom would acquiese, because at least it wasn’t a lower back tattoo of a butterfly. On a penis:

“I wanted highlights, you know, and the salon thing,” Lexi said, explaining that the idea of being pampered seemed fun.

In her case, “the salon thing” meant a couple of hours at Toadly Kool Me, a children’s hair salon in nearby Fayetteville. For $45, Lexi would receive six caramel streaks of permanent color along her part, for a look she described as “a little punky,” followed by a blow dry and flat ironing.

“Lexi works hard, gets good grades,” her mother said. “I feel like she deserves a treat.”

So do like our mom did and let her out of the basement for the night. Simple.

“We’ve had girls as young as 6 in for highlights, but 9 and 10 is more the norm,” said Tammy Currin, the owner of the Toadly Kool Me. “If it’s not a relaxer, highlights are usually the first step mothers will allow. Once the girls’ friends see them, they’re in the next week getting streaks of their own.”

No one tracks how many girls 12 and younger go to professionals to receive lowlights that darken, pale tints of color, straighteners, curl-inducing permanents or full-color dye with highlights.

But, “the trend is definitely there,” said Gordon Miller, a spokesman for the National Cosmetology Association. “It’s a lucrative niche market for the industry that is beginning to be addressed at trade shows and other association events.”

It’s also an excellent way for young girls to equate looks with worth and style with personality. One of the best things about being young and, we hope, getting old, is that you are either oblivious to or don’t care about what others think to the extent of, say, a completely self-conscious and self-aware adolescent or blogger. Of course, this isn’t new. We remember, very distinctly, asking our mom specifically not to buy a Hello Kitty pencil case in second grade because we wanted ours to be different from everyone else’s. But this was more a matter of materialism than a preoccupation with looks and beauty. Our appearance never registered with us (as childhood photographs show very clearly) until we hit puberty and suddenly everything was a mess and not up to par with what everyone else had or didn’t.

To equate “getting a treat” with altering one’s appearance to be cool or trendy is sending young girls the message that that’s the most important thing they have to offer. This is literally the highlight of her pre-adolescence. Why not get Lexi a book or a guitar or a an easel instead? There’s a time to show individuality through altering one’s appearance, let’s try not to make that time so early that personality and intellectual curiosity are stunted as a result.

A Girl’s Life, With Highlights [NY Times]