By DIANA APPLEYARD and SADIE NICHOLAS

Last updated at 08:22 07 August 2007

At nine, Bethany doesn't 'feel right' without fake tan. 11-year-old Belle waxes her legs. Karolina, 10, won't leave home without scent. Harmless fun? Or proof of the insidious sexualisation of our children?:

Bethany Conheeny takes two hours to get ready each morning. A detailed inspection of her morning routine

gives some indication why.

After washing her naturally wavy hair, she spritzes, sprays and straightens it with £120 designer

ceramic straighteners.

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If there's so much as a kink left, she starts again.

She's rigorous in her cleansing, toning and

moisturing routine, and before leaving the house,

applies a slick of lip-gloss.

At the weekends, it

takes longer. Bethany — who has £70 worth of

beauty treatments each week, including a spray

tan, pedicure, manicure and eyebrow wax —

applies St Tropez blusher, pink eye shadow and

mascara.

She prefers to use a Chanel foundation over her

moisturiser, but as her 37-year-old mother

Catherine, a qualified beautician, puts it, perhaps

somewhat mildly: "She's a bit young for that."

She has a point. Bethany is nine years old.

Yet she's far from the only pre-teen beauty addict

to seem more concerned about her make-up than

her exam marks.

Take 11-year-old Belle Chapman.

Last week, Belle, a naturally pretty brunette,

turned to her mother Cheryl and said: "I must get

my legs waxed again, they are getting so hairy."

Cheryl, a PR executive from Reigate in Surrey,

says: "Her monthly waxing costs me about £30, and

she regularly has her hair highlighted, which costs

£60.

"I spend more on beauty treatments for her

than myself. She loves having facials. I put my foot

down about her using tanning beds, but she is

badgering me to have the latest spray-on tan.

She's even had her arms waxed."

Bethany is on the books of a Leeds

modelling agency. Belle, meanwhile, has

already had modelling assignments for

children's clothes catalogues.

Depressingly - but somewhat

predictably - Belle's role models read

like a contents page for a cheap

celebrity magazine.

Like many of her

friends, she idolises Jordan, Victoria

Beckham and Girls Aloud.

And her mother says she can't see

anything wrong with that.

"Belle's done a few modelling jobs, and

would love to get into showbusiness,"

Cheryl says.

"It started when she was

eight, and wanted highlights putting in

her hair and her ears pierced. She said

all her friends were having it done and

so I let her. She's a determined girl, who

likes to be thought of as cool.

"In many ways she isn't a child at all

— her obsessions are clothes, hair and

make-up.

"She adores pink clothes and

goes out wearing tiny tops showing her

tummy, skinny jeans and her Ugg

boots. When I was her age I wore jeans

and jumpers and enjoyed playing out.

She hangs around with friends at the

shops."

Cheryl is divorced and also has a

14-year-old son, Caspar. Despite paying

for her little girl's waxing treatments,

she does admit to being disturbed by

the way her daughter dances.

"She does all this very sexy dancing,

'shaking your booty' I think it's called.

But she has no idea how sexual the

moves are. I wonder what's going to be

left for her when she actually becomes a

teenager — where is it all headed?"

Indeed. Though it's impossible not to

feel that Cheryl only has herself to

blame for encouraging Belle to dress

like an 18-year-old.

Surely, she and

Bethany's mother Catherine could stop

pandering to their daughters' unhealthy

obsession with their looks and refuse to

pay for it?

Catherine says: "If her nails need doing

or the tan needs topping up, Bethany

complains she doesn't feel right - a

feeling lots of women can associate

with."

Of course, the uncomfortable truth

is that, like Belle, Bethany is not a

woman, she's a child, one of thousands

of young girls being bombarded

by society's confused and

damaging messages as they grow up

— messages it appears are being

reinforced by their mothers.

At a recent family party,

Catherine recalls how a

14-year-old boy pursued her

nine-year-old daughter.

"He

wouldn't leave her alone all

night, which made me feel very

uncomfortable," says Catherine, who

runs a furniture business with husband

David, 42, in Huddersfield, West

Yorkshire.

"But thankfully she told him

she was nine and not interested in him.

"I felt a little guilty because of the part

I play in Bethany looking older than she

is, but all her friends are the same, and

when she works hard at school I'm loath

to deny her the beauty treats she loves."

Like the nymphets and faunlets in

Nabokov's novel Lolita, British society,

it seems, is fast breeding a generation of

young girls being sexualised before their

bodies have had time to develop.

It's a phenomenon once largely

associated with America, where the

spotlight fell on the high-pressure world

of child pageants following the brutal,

unsolved murder of six-year-old child

model JonBenet Ramsey in 1996.

Now those same contests are being held up

and down this country and children's

charities are expressing concern.

Last week, it was reported that

paedophiles were having online

conversations about one British child

pageant regular — 11-year-old Sasha

Bennington.

Sasha — with her bleach

blonde hair and blue eyes — was a

finalist in the Miss British Isles

contest last year.

A spokesman for the Online Sex

Offenders Community monitoring team

said: 'Sasha is now at serious risk. We

feel that child pageants should be

banned altogether.'

Pause for thought for Elima Jackson

who spends £200 a month on beauty

treatments for her ten-year-old twin

daughters, Karolina and Daniela.

Both

girls, who have modelled children's

swimwear and dressing up costumes for

Toys R Us, have expensive highlighted

hair and go to a beauty salon near their

home in Westgate-on-Sea in Kent each

week to have manicures.

They may not be allowed to

wear make-up to school, but

they won't leave the house

without running straighteners

through their hair and spritzing

themselves with Barbie perfume.

Far from being horrified that her

ten-year-olds are obsessed with their

looks, Elima, 30, encourages them.

She

says: "I'm glad they like to look after

themselves from such a young age."

She sees nothing wrong with the fact

that her daughters worship Lindsay

Lohan (who has just been arrested for

drink-driving) and Britney Spears

(who recently had a spell in rehab)

because they are seen as 'pretty' and

'glamorous'.

The girls' obsession with beauty

began when they were five and Daniela

was chosen to model for the packaging

of a light-up child's beauty box.

"It gave

her a taste for it and her sister wanted

to get in on the act too," Elima says.

But it is the self-consciousness of

these girls at an age when they should

be carefree that is so alarming.

And

Cheryl is all too aware of the conflicts at

the heart of her daughter Belle's world.

She says: "She is conscious of her body

image and is always saying things like: 'I

am far too fat, my stomach is too big.'

"She's still got a little girl's body, and

she thinks there is something wrong

with her because she doesn't look like a

woman yet.

"One day last year she came

downstairs wearing a tiny mini skirt

with stockings," she recalls.

"She looked like a mini prostitute, and

I had to tell her to get changed. She

looks 14. It's frightening, but I don't

know what I can do to stop her acting

and dressing like a mini adult."

Experts

in America have already warned that a

generation of young girls are being

psychologically damaged by the

relentless marketing of inappropriate

'sexy' clothing and toys.

And it's the

same on this side of the Atlantic.

Last year, Tesco was forced to

remove the Peekaboo pole-dancing

kit from the toys and games section of

its website, and a couple of years ago,

Asda provoked a furore for selling

inappropriately adult lingerie for

children, including thongs and push-up

black lace bras.

The Daily Mail columnist Bel Mooney,

who lectures on the role pornography

plays in society, says: "Go into town

centres and you see pre-teen girls

dressed as go-go dancers in mini skirts

or navel-showing jeans with skimpy

crop tops over their flat chests.

"Do parents have to hammer the nails

in the coffin of innocence themselves?"

Set stories such as this together with

the release of a UN study in February

which said British children were the

unhappiest and unhealthiest in the

developed world, and a very worrying

picture of Britain's young girls begins to

emerge.

And what is especially worrying of all

is the role of parents in all this and what

appears to be an increasing inability to

say 'no'.

Belle's mother Cheryl says: "I suppose

the obvious response is that I could

stop her, but the trouble is all her friends

are dressing and acting like this, and she

says it would make her too different."

Elima, mother of Karolina and Daniela,

adds: "My partner rolls his eyes at the

girls' beauty regime and says they

should be concentrating on their studies.

"But I don't see anything wrong with

what they are doing."

Meanwhile Catherine says her

husband David is unhappy about

Bethany's obsession with beauty.

"He's

always telling her: 'You've got to be a

child and that means you shouldn't be

standing in front of the mirror putting

make-up on.'

"I wouldn't let her wear heels or

low-cut tops because that definitely sexualises

children, but I don't worry about

Bethany wearing make-up."

Gail Odell admits encouraging her

12-year-old daughter, Sarah-Jane, to

be a model.

Last year she took part in

the Miss Britain junior beauty competition

and wore a sexy, low-cut black

wrap-over evening dress and make-up.

"She absolutely loved it," says 42-year-old

Gail, who runs an antique business

in Warwickshire with her husband, Tom

and is also mother to 18-month-old

Chloe, Markus, five, Warren, 16, Lee, 17

and Craig, 20.

She says: "People might

have a problem with children dressing

up like this, but I think that modelling

will be a very good career for her. She's

very photogenic and a very pretty little

girl.

"It was my idea for her to take part —

we got into it after her little sister Chloe

got some modelling work. People had

told me that Chloe ought to model

because she was such a lovely baby.

"I then looked at Sarah-Jane and

realised she had potential, too. I think

competitions like pre-teen pageants are

fun — what harm can they do?"

Perhaps we should not be surprised

that in a world where Jordan writes a

novel and it shoots to the top of the

best-seller list, girls are growing up to

believe that looks hold the key to

everything worth striving for.

At home in Woolwich, South-East

London, seven-year-old Kayla Kirby-

Archer loves nothing better than to

have her hair styled and make-up

applied. She loves the ballgown and

tiara she wore when she won the first

Little Miss British Isles beauty pageant

last October.

"I saw the competition advertised

on the internet," says her 28-year-old

mother Donna, a full-time married

mother of three.

"It did wonders for

her confidence and she walked

away with the title, a quad bike,

£200, a modelling portfolio and an

electric scooter.

"We're saving the

money to take her shopping for

outfits when she goes to have

more photos taken for her portfolio

soon."

According to Donna, Kayla's

fascination with make-up began

when she was six years old. She is

already asking her mother if she

can have her legs waxed.

For many, such behaviour may

seem hard to fathom, but experts

from the American Psychological

Association point an accusing

finger at toys such as Bratz dolls,

voted Girls Toy of the Year in the

UK in 2002, which come with eye

make-up, miniskirts, fishnet

stockings and feather boas, and

embrace the slogan 'passion for

fashion'.

Is it surprising then that

young girls are receiving such

mixed messages?

In reality however, it appears

it's the parents who ultimately

believe that beauty, success and

financial security go hand in

hand.

"It's their decision to model and

if they didn't want to then I

wouldn't force them," says Elima

of her twins.

Catherine Conheeney says:

"Bethany will need to be slim to

be a model but I'm working hard

to explain that she needs the

right balance of food to make

sure she's healthy. I've just

entered her for a modelling

competition to find the next

Kate Moss."

Of course, some parents might

feel that there is time enough to

worry about such things.

And for those that do, the only

way to fight back against

pressures is surely to allow

children to remain children so

they can enjoy the few precious

years of innocent freedom

granted to them before they

reach adulthood.