Dear Tanya

My six-year-old daughter has a problem that I fear may affect her social and psychological development, as well as her performance at school. She has developed a heavy growth of very dark hair on her legs, and she is very self-conscious about it. Her friends have quite innocently begun to pass comment and she is becoming increasingly aware of it. She avoids wearing dresses and short trousers wherever possible, and when she does wear them, her confidence is markedly deflated. My fear is that as she grows older, the innocent remarks may become more barbed, and will have an increasing influence on her life. I have spoken to our family GP and expressed my concerns, but he basically dismissed them, saying that all children have something they are uncomfortable with, and she will have treatments readily available to her in later years. My daughter is a happy and generally very confident child who participates in many varied activities, so it is very difficult to watch her confidence become so affected in situations where she feels people will be looking at her body hair. She has recently been invited to swimming parties, but makes excuses for why she shouldn't go. Are there any acceptable treatments for a child of this age?

Simone

You ask an important question. It hits at a number of issues central to raising our daughters in this culture of precocious gender maturity, and it also brings up important cultural questions about what it is to be female.

There are a number of perspectives on this issue that range from the medical to the social to the feminist. To begin with, it is important to exclude any biological reason for excessive hirsutism. Hirsutism in women and girls can be defined as a few dark chin hairs to a full beard and chest hair.

Clearly there are those whose cultural background will predispose them to greater hair growth via hereditary factors, however there are other reasons that may also need to be excluded. For most females, excessive hair growth is due to elevated levels of androgens (male hormones) in the blood, or it could be that a female with normal levels has hair follicles that are hypersensitive to testosterone. If you have concerns, ask your doctor to refer you to a paediatric endocrinologist.

But whatever the explanation, many women (young and old) find the whole subject of body hair embarrassing, and indeed it is difficult to get an accurate perspective on the prevalence of hirsutism in women because many will not talk about their hair and instead find methods to remove it. Some doctors find that patients come to see them only when they are deeply unhappy with their body hair and find that it is profoundly affecting their self-esteem, social lives and even mental health - this takes our thinking into broader social and cultural perspectives.

Hair removal is big business. Annual spend on such products is estimated to be in excess of £300 million, with an ever-expanding market targeted at girls and young teens. How should we think about this? Should we throw our hands up in despair alongside the early feminists who defined this as the exploitation and oppression of women in societies where what it is to be female is defined by predominantly male ideals? Or do we accept that this is how notions of femininity are evolving?

It seems to me significant that women buy these products for themselves, and indeed mothers buy them for their daughters (alongside the pre-teen magazines with free make-up products). So which gender is perpetuating this narrow definition of female beauty?

Last year, the American Psychological Association published an interesting study that looked at self-esteem in girls, given the increasing pressures to conform to gender stereotypes of beauty from a younger and younger age. The lead researcher, Eileen Zurbriggen, has reviewed 15 years of research and concluded that being bombarded with images and products that sexualise girls is damaging a generation of women.

The report describes a “pervasive culture” that focuses on the female body and “saturates” us with images of the beauty ideal from a very young age. Zurbriggen describes how women are at risk of “feelings of shame... and dissatisfaction” about their bodies. This can create depressed, eating disordered and less sexually assertive young women. There is also some evidence that girls who are preoccupied with body image do less well on cognitive tests.

But does this mean that we should all stop shaving our legs before we become cognitively compromised and slide into mental health problems? Well, clearly there are those women who will always be susceptible to such difficulties, and there can be no doubt that the pressure to look and be a certain way as a woman can add considerable pressure to those who are already vulnerable. However, it also appears that girls are increasingly resilient to such messages - they are aware of them and debate them openly.

I suspect that the biggest risk to your daughter at the moment is the teasing she is beginning to receive from her peers and the dawning of the idea that there is something “different” and “not right” about her.

Children can be cruel without meaning to be - they see the world in very black and white terms, and they lack impulse control. This means that they often say things that are very hurtful to others they identify as different. Today it is the hair on your daughter's legs, tomorrow it might be the glasses or braces of another child.

Dealing with being different and how other people respond to that is a skill for life; having the courage to be oneself is crucial for strong self-esteem. We want our girls to hold their heads up high and say no to pressure from those who want to control or manipulate them. We hope that they will define and value themselves as more than just their external attributes.

I too am the mother of a daughter and grapple with such issues for her in this age in which she and her friends are under unending pressure to grow up earlier than we ever did. Like you, I find it alarming at times, but actually that makes me more determined to equip my girl with a strong sense of who she is by talking to her about the choices available to her and the way she wants to deal with them. In my experience, anxious parents who say nothing (flight) or argue incessantly with their children (fight) will often end up pushing them in the opposite direction.

There are ways in which you can safely remove your daughter's hair, eg, shaving or depilation. However, you need to think carefully about why you would do this and if you did, how you would do so in a way that would help your child to a) not feel ashamed of her body and b) learn to believe that the opinions of others about our bodies are less important than our own.

It's a tricky one for us parents of girls. Actually, it is also becoming a challenge for those of us raising boys - recent research shows that 20 per cent of British men remove some body hair, and their numbers are increasing. Clearly the traditional norms of masculinity are now under threat as well.

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