LITTLE GIRLS AGAIN

We had company the past weekend. Another little girl, this one eight years old. She walks in and says importantly, "I have a makeup bag."

Thinking lip gloss and clear fingernail polish and things like that, I ask, "What do you have in it?"

"Oh... Mascara and other stuff."

"Mascara?"A lot different from how it used to be. I can't remember mascara ever showing up in play makeup.

She opened her bag. Sure enough, there was makeup. An eyeliner pencil, a compact, maybe some blush. And mascara.

"My mommy gave me most of it," she explains, "but we bought the mascara."

And every morning she carefully "made up" her face with the mascara. Oh, she also used some lip softener (colorless in a lipstick tube) I gave her.

I'm beginning to sound like an old fart but things have really changed since I was a little girl!

GIRLS

I've been visiting a home with two seven-year-old girls.

One has her own beauty routine in the morning. She uses a comb-like brush on her hair before she takes one with bristles, wets it and brushes till her hair's damped down and straight. Then she looks at herself smugly in the mirror, turning from side to side. "There," she says. "My hair is perfect."

The other runs a brush through one side of her hair and she's done.

So when we let the 'lid' down on the convertible and they're in the back seat singing along to Yakety Yak, guess which one starts squealing because her hair's getting blown.

Nope. Both of 'em.

Didn't realize they started so young.