This TikTok Mom is Normalizing Removing Her Daughter’s Facial Hair

And in the process, she's showing that representation matters.

Fact checked by Sarah Scott

When Vidya Gopalan was in middle school, she approached her mom about removing facial hair around her eyebrows—and was turned down, as her mom didn’t think she was old enough. So Gopalan did what so many South Asians growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s (myself included) did: She attempted to remove unwanted hair on her own. Not surprisingly, it “wasn’t a good decision,” according to Gopalan, a social media creator who goes by the handle @queencitytrends.

So when Gopalan’s daughter, Sahana, who is now a middle school student herself, asks to have her own facial hair removed, Gopalan says yes. “I think it’s very common for mothers to just kind of brush it off. So I made an effort: When my daughter asks me or she wants something taken off, facial hair-wise, I will 100% support her,” Gopalan tells Parents.

The mom recently shared a video of herself removing her daughter’s facial hair on TikTok with the caption: “I tried doing this myself secretly at her age since I wasn’t allowed to do this until HS and it didn't end well.” The video has been “liked” over two million times and has received overwhelmingly positive comments.

In some ways, reactions to this video are surprising to me as a fellow South Asian woman who remembers the experience of growing up in a world that very much upheld Eurocentric beauty standards (even more so than it does today).

To be honest, I expected Gopalan to get pushback for removing her child’s facial hair in this video (see: One comment on her video, which reads “Omg people used to think my mom was abusive for threading my eyebrows. I begged for it!”). Not because there’s anything wrong with what Gopalan’s doing (at all!), but the reality is, that there’s almost no representation of facial hair removal for teens, and I thought people would react a certain way due to simply lacking awareness. It’s something no one ever talked about or did openly, especially when I was growing up. But now, thanks to people like Gopalan, it doesn’t have to be this taboo thing.

After posting this TikTok, Gopalan says she’s received overwhelming support. “So many girls and mothers deal with this and go through this, and I’ve had so many people reach out to me saying ‘this has really helped me’ or ‘this has spurred a conversation with my mom’—or even parents reaching out to me saying ‘this is really helpful, my daughter has asked me about doing this and I said no, but I think I’m going to do it’,” she says.

For women like Gopalan (and me), having the experience of growing up as a minority in the United States gives us the gift of being able to learn from our own experiences when parenting our children.

“I would rather be the one to do it for her or get professional help for her vs. her going off and doing it on her own, and taking an eyebrow out or doing something that she’s going to regret. That was the main intention of the post,” says Gopalan.

It can be hard to find the line between doing the things that make us feel more comfortable in our own skin and bending to harmful beauty standards. As parents, we’re also tasked with helping our kids identify that line. For Gopalan, it all comes down to her child’s comfort.

“I think it’s just listening to your child—what they want, what they think, what makes them comfortable,” she says. “Something as little as removing hair from your face, if that’s what’s going to build confidence or self-esteem, or make them feel better, there’s no reason to not do it.”

"I think it’s just listening to your child—what they want, what they think, what makes them comfortable. Something as little as removing hair from your face, if that’s what’s going to build confidence or self-esteem, or make them feel better, there’s no reason to not do it."

Vidya Gopalan

Gopalan enforces the importance of making judgment calls as a parent, too. “Age is an important thing. She’s in middle school—if she had asked me when she was 3 or 4 years old, I would have probably said no,” she says. “You just have to listen to what their wants and needs are and then be supportive in [a way that] makes sense [and] is age-appropriate.”

This particular TikTok isn’t the first one Gopalan has shared featuring facial hair removal. She also shared another clip of herself removing her daughter’s facial hair as well as a video of Sahana having her eyebrows waxed ahead of the first day of middle school. On the latter video, a user commented, “Love that you’re letting her get her brows waxed, wish my mom did this for me.”

By presenting these videos without shame, by treating facial hair removal as it’s simply part of the grooming process just like applying makeup or brushing hair (which is exactly what it is!), this mom is normalizing something that really needs to be normalized—and providing key representation for fellow moms and kids who deal with this issue, particularly brown moms and kids.

“It’s a normal thing,” she says. “[I’m just] creating normalcy around it.”

Related: An Age-By-Age Guide To Your Kid's Hygiene

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Read the original article on Parents.