Strip Ministry of Waxing

With Memorial Day is behind us and summer in full swing, the demand for summer beauty treatments--pedicures, bikini waxes, spray tans--sky rockets. Many of these services involve a technician--usually a virtual stranger--getting all up in your personal space. So how much do you tip? And what happens when you're not happy with the service you received? Is it OK to totally stiff someone who just spent 20 minutes getting intimately acquainted with your bikini line? We investigate.

This holiday season I've been inundated with beauty products meant to evoke the season--peppermint scrubs, cranberry lip gloss, sparkly red nail polish, and vanilla candles galore. But nothing says "Merry Christmas" quite like a...gingerbread bikini wax. Yes, this exists. And yes, I got one.

There's been a lot of attention lately on the sexualization of children (remember Thylane Blondeau and lingerie for four-year-olds?), and now the beauty industry is under some scrutiny. We already know that a little girl can get a spray tan, but she can now apparently get a bikini wax at the age of 11. Yesterday Good Morning America (you can watch the segment on Jezebel) did a piece about beauty treatments for girls, and we were pretty surprised by the services salons (and parents) were willing to perform on kids as young as 11. We're not talking about a pretty hairdo or a manicure here--although those are offered for one-year-olds! We're talking about bikini waxes for girls who are barely pubertal. The waxing seemed the most egregious to us, so we decided to poke around a bit to see if there really is a demand for waxing services for girls. We were pretty surprised by some of the things we discovered.