A Texas mom's TikTok video of her waxing her 3-year-old daughter's eyebrows has sparked debate and even backlash about young children, hair removal, bullying and more.
Leah Garcia shared the video post on her TikTok page on Oct. 3 and wrote in text overlaid on the video, "Idc! Idc! I'd rather y'all call me a bad mom before I let my 3 year old walk around with a unibrow like my parents did!" Since then, the clip has been viewed more than 27 million times, received more than 37 million comments and inspired TikTok stitches with other users responding in their own video posts.
"I really had good intentions when posting it. I had no idea it was going to cause the uproar that it did," Garcia told "Good Morning America."
Many responses have been supportive and positive.
"My mom did this and my hair never grew back where she waxed. Best thing ever," one TikTok user commented.
Another replied, "You're not a bad mom at all!! I did this to my kids for the exact same reason!!"
But others disagreed, with one writing, "this is how you start low self esteem in your child. never point out a flaw always make them feel perfect. what's wrong with u."
"I hope when she's older she realizes her insecurities were imposed on her by the person who was supposed to make her feel the most beautiful in this world poor baby," another user wrote in a TikTok stitch post.
Garcia also shared with "GMA" several screenshots of direct messages and an email she had received. In them, social media users shamed Garcia and accused her of poor parenting, including one who threatened to call child protective services on her. The latter accusation inspired Garcia to respond in a follow-up TikTok post with the caption, "Yall have taken this WAY too far!!!"
Garcia, who said she was uncomfortable with her own unibrow growing up, said part of her motivation to waxing her toddler's brows was to prevent future bullying. She said she wanted to share the video clip to show other parents who felt the same way as her that they weren't alone.
"I was posting it to relate to moms who do do that, because I knew that I wasn't alone. And also let the moms who don't do it but who do have a hairy child who struggle with this, know that it's OK," Garcia said, adding that she had intended the post to be lighthearted.
The 31-year-old, who is a mom of two daughters and a stepmom of one son, said she'd been waxing her 3-year-old daughter's eyebrows for nearly a year after the toddler saw her older sister and cousins get their brows waxed at home and repeatedly asked Garcia to wax her own brows.
"It wasn't like, 'Mom, I have a unibrow and I'm so insecure, please wax my eyebrow.' … but she did ask me and I knew at one point or another, I was going to end up waxing her at a young age so it might as well be at a time where she was open and wanting it, so I just took the opportunity for what it was," Garcia said.
"If at any point, (my children) say, 'Hey, I think I want to rock a unibrow then rock the hell out of that unibrow. I allow my children to express themselves and their appearance however they want to," she continued.
As for the backlash she's received, Garcia said she thinks some of the negativity has come from those who haven't been bullied in the past. "Something as small as a unibrow waxing, it's such a small thing to have to do and I could save her so much pain. It's way easier to grow back that unibrow than it is to come back from bullying and so I would much rather just take the hate than my daughter take any bullying about a unibrow," Garcia said.
Jerry Bubrick, a senior clinical psychologist with the Anxiety Disorders Center of the Child Mind Institute in New York told "GMA" the waxing process can be a healthy exploration for older children but for toddlers, it may take away from their independence and undermine their ability to make their own decisions.
"I could totally understand from a parent's point of view. You don't want your kid to suffer. You don't want your kid to be the victim of a bullying experience," Bubrick said. "We want our kids to grow up and have skills to be able to handle situations and ways to articulate if something isn't feeling right ... [but] by making things perfect for this child, we're kind of preventing all of those things from developing."
"From my opinion, it's a little bit too preventative," he added.
When it comes to hair removal for kids as young as 3, medical experts also say there's limited research on the topic specifically and there doesn't appear to be a need for it if a child is otherwise healthy.
"Hair removal is a social choice. It is not a medical necessity. Nobody needs to remove any of their body hair unless they choose to," Dr. A. Yasmine Kirkorian, chief of dermatology at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., told "GMA."
"It's hard to justify doing a painful procedure in a toddler who doesn't care about their hair, isn't probably even aware of it and you're imposing an adult social construct on the toddler so that would be my concern," Kirkorian continued. At the same time, however, the pediatric dermatologist said if a child can assent and has valid reasons for wanting hair removal, there is no age that is too young for hair removal and the process can be acceptable if done safely by a professional.
"A child might say, 'Well, kids have noticed that I have hairy legs or arms or a unibrow or something and I want to remove the hair,' and the parent in that circumstance has come to me to ask, 'Is that safe?' " Kirkorian said. "And I say as long as the child wants to do it, and you can go through all those ideas of the social ramifications and why you might be doing it, then any hair removal is safe in the setting that a child wants to do it and can participate safely, whether that be shaving, waxing, trimming, or even laser hair removal."
