I spend £350 a month to turn my 10-year-old daughter into a beauty queen
Spray tans, fake nails, false eyelashes, an array of hairpieces, plenty of make-up … it’s the sort of treatment you might associate with a singer or reality star.
But this is ten-year-old Barbie Loveridge’s beauty regime – and it costs thousands of pounds per year.
The schoolgirl loves getting dolled up for beauty pageants and her mother Samantha Pavey, 29, spends as much as £350 a month to make sure her daughter looks the part for the competitions she has been entering since she was seven.
And despite admitting Barbie ‘wears more make-up than me when I go on a night out’, hairdresser Miss Pavey insists that pageants do not sexualise children.
Miss Pavey said: ‘It doesn’t matter what a child is wearing, it’s just clothes.
'She only wears the outfits to go on the stage. The make-up and nails come straight off afterwards. It’s just for the stage.’
Barbie has entered more than 30 pageants in the past two years but has yet to win the highest ‘Ultimate Supreme’ title, despite having many age-group victories to her name.
Just one glamorous pageant dress for her daughter can set Miss Pavey back as much as £300.
On top of that, she spends around £150 on clothes, shoes and jewellery for the schoolgirl to wear in other categories of a pageant.
Each contest can involve three different costume changes, with Barbie being made up in different outfits and styles during the day.
And then there are the beauty treatments, with a spray tan at £25, stick-on fake nails at £8 and false eyelashes at £4 – all contributing to a hefty bill.
Despite having two younger children – sons Michael, eight, and Mantana, four – Miss Pavey also finds time to cut Barbie’s wigs for her and add extra sparkles to her outfits.
The single mother said: ‘I’d like her to carry on with [pageants], it’s a hobby and keeps her out of trouble.
'She chooses her own look and outfits, I’d never put her in anything she didn’t feel comfortable in.
‘On a pageant day she wears more make-up than me when I go on a night out. She always has false nails. We use stick-on ones so we can get them off in time for school.
‘Sometimes she gets spray tans, sometimes I do it myself – depending on what I can afford.
‘We don’t go to a pageant without tan on – it’s not worth doing. She loves it and I love it – we’re completely hooked now.’
Barbie, who has 20 different hairpieces, said: ‘I love being on stage, I love having new outfits and dresses. I love getting new crowns.’
On top of the clothes and beauty treatments, Miss Pavey also has to shell out ‘£40 on music, £70 to enter and then there’s the travel, the list goes on and on’ each time they enter a pageant.
‘We probably go about once a month now, but at one point it was once a week,’ she said.
‘We do the nails and the tan the night before. Then on pageant day it takes two hours to do the hair and make-up. She loves being made up, she likes to do bits of make-up herself and tells me how to do it.’
Away from the pageants, however, Miss Pavey, of Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, does not allow Barbie to wear fake tan and make-up and insists on a natural look for school.
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