Beauty Salon for girls as young as ONE

I am completely lost for words by the article in today's Daily Mail which describes a beauty salon for girls under the age of thirteen and for girls as young as one year old.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2001148/Trendy-Monkeys-Essex-beauty-salons-make-overs-spray-tans-girls-young-1.html

Appearances or something else?

What attracts you to other people? Is it appearances, the way they dress, their face, the way they speak, the clothes they wear? For me - and I'm beginning to think I'm in a minority of one here - it is far more than that. I am attracted to people I can talk to and who understand where I'm coming from. That does not mean I have to agree with them all the time - just can I hold a conversation with them. Personality as well - can they laugh at themselves - do they have a good understanding of how they tick.



I would almost say appearances are irrelevant to me as I never seem to agree with the majority about which celebrity is sexually attractive. I can't understand what people see on George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom etc. Now Sean Connery, Roger Moore or Hugh Grant I find attractive and I always used to like George Peppard. But again I can't rave about them and I could only get really interested in them if I could hold a conversation with them.



Is it perhaps an age thing? I don't know. My other half is always asking me what attracted me to him over 20 years ago now and I keep saying it wasn't anything physical - just his personality and the fact I could talk to him. He says he wouldn't be with me if he hadn't thought I looked beautiful. If I'd been ugly however well we got on he wouldn't have been interested.


Someone started a discussion on a forum about a woman on television saying he was distracted by her appearance and couldn't concentrate on what she was saying. I took issue with that and said it was how the person did her job that mattered not appearances. I was called everything under the sun including a plug ugly feminist and a lesbian. I also said a handsome man would not distract me in the same way though clearly I can only speak for myself!

Everyone seemed to be saying that I was wrong to criticise those who focus on appearance and that everyone does it. But not everyone does do it. I know some men - and yes I'm generalising here - are only interested in what a woman looks like and nothing else. There are also women who do the same. But just because there are many people who think like that doesn't make it right. It also doesn't mean you're bigoted if you happen to think it's wrong to insist that a woman's appearance is the most important thing about her.

The Equality Illusion

Kat Banyard's The Equality Illusion: The Truth about Women and Men Today covers some of the same ground as Natasha Walter's Living Dolls. I've read about 60 pages of it so far and it is really interesting - and thought provoking. She wrote it as a result of interviewing over 100 people about equality issues.

The book is arranged as though the reader is living through 24 hours and showing how women spend time doing things which men never need to do. She talks about eating disorders and how they affect women's lives - over 90% of eating disorder sufferers are women. We see how even young girls are expected to go to school wearing make up. Which made me think about what happened to school rules which banned makeup? I can remember the deputy headmistress standing over girls while they scrubbed their faces if they dared to go to school with makeup on. It usually earned people at least a detention.

I will review the book at greater length when I've finished it.