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"So I just made the move from NYC to New Jersey, and while I&amp;#x27;m totally excited about having a house and yard, I have all the usual apprehensions of a longtime city girl-gone-&amp;#x27;burbs (fear that I&amp;#x27;ll be the only person who prefers walking to driving my SUV, fear of spending all my leisure time in my friends&amp;#x27; McMansions talking about our new SUVs and kids&amp;#x27; soccer teams, fear of creepily glossy and perfect non-organic produce displayed in cavernous supermarkets). And let&amp;#x27;s just say my visit to the local nail salon yesterday did not help alleviate the fears. While I was perched on my pedicure chair at Diva Nail, a girl of perhaps 12 marched in asking for a gel manicure and an eyebrow wax. Then an even younger girl (maybe 10?) came in (with her mom) and mentioned she&amp;#x27;d gotten her hair blown out at the salon next door while waiting for her turn to get a mani-pedi. Huh? Looking around, I realized fully half the patrons in the salon had to be in grade/middle school--they must have all been primping for back-to-school. It all left me feeling really sad and missing Brooklyn, where I never witnessed this sort of thing (just the occasional young girl getting her toes painted next to Mommy, which I think is totally cute). Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just getting really old, but my friends and I were not having all these professional procedures done as pre-teens. If we wanted a manicure, we went to CVS and bought some Wet N&amp;#x27; Wild polish for $1 of allowance money. If we wanted to shape our brows, we busted out our tweezers. And I didn&amp;#x27;t even know what a blowout was until I moved to NYC in my twenties (but granted, I had easy straight hair growing up. But so did the girl in the salon today!). The experience just reinforced stereotypes I have in my head about Jersey girls being really high-maintenance (I guess watching the Real Housewives hasn&amp;#x27;t helped), and I am nervous about my own daughters getting all caught up in this grown-up beauty stuff at a really young age. I&amp;#x27;d rather they get to wait until at least their teens before they adopt rigorous beauty regimens! I don&amp;#x27;t know. Am I overreacting? Do you think it&amp;#x27;s a bit much for pre-teens to be getting professional blowouts and mani-pedis for back to school? Did you ever do so back at that age? Photo: Thinkstock"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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