‘Human Barbie’ gives 7-year-old daughter liposuction voucher
‘Human Barbie’ gives 7-year-old daughter liposuction voucher ABC News Posted on January 5, 2012 at 11:49 AM (ABC News) - The UK’s self-proclaimed “Human Barbie” gave her 7-year-old daughter an unusual stocking stuffer this Christmas: a £7,000 voucher for liposuction. The holiday gift was a follow-up to Poppy’s most recent birthday present from her mum: A £6,000 voucher for breast augmentation.
‘She asks for surgery all the time. She wants to look good and lipo is one of those procedures that will always come in handy,” 51-year-old Sarah Burge told the UK’s Daily Mail. “I see these vouchers as investing in her future, like saving money for her education.”
Last year Burge, who says she taught her daughter how to pole dance when the girl was 6, defended giving her daughter a breast augmentation voucher when she told Closer Magazine, “Poppy begged me for a boob job, so I gave her the voucher so she can have it after she’s 16, when it’s legal. If she develops naturally big boobs, she can have something else done with it.”
The mother says that her other daughters, ages 27 and 17, have already had work done. As for Burge, the Daily Mail reported that she rang in her 51st birthday with £51,000 of cosmetic surgery.
Burge has reportedly spent close to $ 1 million on her own plastic surgery endeavors. She works as an event planner for plastic surgery and swinging parties, and dabbles as a scribe of erotic novels.
“Some people think it’s controversial and I get angry when strangers say I’m a bad mother because I don’t think there’s any harm in giving her this gift,” Burge told the mag. “Poppy is a normal kid who is good at sports and loves playing outside. Girls don’t want Snow White and Cinderella any more.
“They want to be WAGs [a British term to describe wives and girlfriends of high-profile soccer stars], and famous like Cheryl Cole and Lady Gaga,” Burge said. “I’m just supporting her and making her dreams come true. Looks are a big part of how our futures pan out – there shouldn’t be a stigma around wanting to look good.”
As for Poppy, she said of her voucher, “I can’t wait to be like Mummy with big boobs. They’re pretty.”
With the rise of shows like “Toddlers & Tiaras” and other age-bending television dramas, many experts question whether girls’ expectations and their ideas of beauty and sexuality are getting to dangerously unsuitable levels.
In response to the issue of the sexualization of girls in the media, the American Psychological Association created a task force.
“We don’t want kids to grow up too fast,” Shari Miles-Cohen, senior director of women’s programs for the American Psychological Association, told ABCNews.com in August. “We want them to be able to develop physically, emotionally, psychologically and socially at appropriate rates for their age.”
As a mother to a 12-year-old girl, Dr. Ari Brown, author of the book “Baby 411,” acknowledged the difficulty in shielding her from the sexualization of girls and the objectification of women in society.
“Childhood is a time to learn about the world, explore, pretend, imagine and create in a safe vacuum of innocence,” she told ABCNews.com in September. “Bypassing those critical life experiences and developmental stages by trying to dress, act and be treated like an adult leaves these children lacking important life skills that help them be confident and successful adults.”
The full feature appears in this week’s Closer magazine, on sale now. Sarah’s book the Half A Million Dollar Girl is available at all good bookshops.
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