Kendall Jenner Started Shaving Her Legs At Age 7 — Is That Too Young?
Kendall Jenner confessed to shaving her legs at the age of 7, after seeing her older sister Kim Kardashian do the same, according to the Daily Mail. “I once walked in on Kim shaving her legs in the shower,” she said. “I was only 7 and I was like: ‘When can I do that? I want to shave my legs.’ And she was like: ‘Not for a long time, Kendall.’”
Jenner added: “A couple of days later, I went and did it with her razor and without any soap or water. I cut my legs to shreds.”
Leg shaving is a beauty rite of passage for many girls, often influenced by friends or older siblings who are already participating in the practice. But what’s an appropriate age? Experts say there’s no blanket rule about when girls should start shaving. “Different girls are ready for shaving their legs at different times,” Carrie M. Brown, MD, of the Arkansas Children’s Hospital, told Parents.com. “Some girls now enter puberty at the age of 8 or 9, and have breast development and menstrual cycles. The quality of body hair changes when a person enters puberty and can be more noticeable (coarser and thicker) than when she was younger. This may lead younger children to be uncomfortable around their peers and create a desire to start shaving.”
It’s definitely a topic that’s on young girls’ minds. “I just co-taught sex ed to a group of fifth-grade girls, and we talked about this issue for a while,” Sara Wolfe Bender, who has one child and is pregnant with her second, tells Yahoo Beauty. “We encouraged the girls to wait as long as possible because once you shave, you can never go back and it’s upkeep from there on out. Let girls stay innocent kids with this stuff for as long as possible, I say!”
Mom of three Nicky Vogt plans to talk to her daughter about shaving when she’s ready and let her daughter decide for herself when to start. “Once my daughter asks to shave her legs, then we will chat about it,” Vogt tells Yahoo Beauty. “She’s going into fifth grade, and I believe that open communication is the key to most everything with parenting, including hair removal. It’s hair on the leg; why make a fuss over whether or not to shave? [But] if she feels more comfortable shaving and wants to, fine!”
Vogt adds: “Right now, none of the girls in the elementary school around her do; they are hairy and don’t care. Once they hit middle school, I think they will start. So it will be a discussion and her choice.”
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