A couple of weeks ago my local newspaper thought it newsworthy that men are getting Brazilian waxes. Now an Australian paper reports that girls as young as 14 are being accepted for what it euphemistically calls “intimate beauty treatments”.

Apparently their “boyfriends” are demanding it. And, thanks to the sexual liberation won for them by their mothers and grandmothers generations, the girls are saying yes.

Worst of all, it seems that some mothers are going along with their daughters to make it clear that they have permission. One shop owner in Brisbane says:

''Mostly it is girls around 16 but we do occasionally get younger girls in, but they must have a parent with them,'' the store manager said.

Do you get these 'parents'? One, their daughter wants to get what child and youth advocates point out is a “porn star” treatment. Two, this is to please the girl’s boyfriend (real or imaginary). At 14? At 16? Don’t they care that she is making herself a sexual object, or about the likely consequences?

Melinda Tankard Reist, a leading critic of the pornification of culture and the sexualization of girls, notes the harmful effects on young women’s body image:

''They've come to despise their natural bodies,'' she said.

How very sad, that adult women are prepared to sacrifice the happiness and health of girls in this way.