If you’re the mother of a girl between the ages of six and 16, you know who Ashley Tisdale is.
Maddie from The Suite Life of Zach and Cody. Star of High School Musical I and II.
Sweet, wholesome, cute, talented. A Disney Hollywood starlet we don’t mind our daughters watching.
Until she got a nose job.
Over the holidays, stories started cropping up about Ashley’s cute new nose. Ashley says she just had an operation for a deviated septum. It was medically necessary, she claims. Except the end of her nose is quite different than it was just a few weeks earlier. And today she doesn’t look like she did before. She’s a whole new person. Which could be OK in the world of Hollywood, but there are lots of little girls who keep an extremely close eye on the girls who star on the shows they watch for a few minutes every night after dinner.
So why should we care? Lots of celebrities get plastic surgery. And if they’re adults, it should be their choice, right?
In theory that’s true, but this is why I care:
“Mommy, my nose is fat.”
When the most adorable eight-year-old on the planet (yes, I AM biased) who watches her fair share of the Disney Channel is worried about whether her nose doesn’t look right because she saw Ashley Tisdale’s new nose in the newspaper, there’s a problem.
How do we explain why she looks different?
“Mommy, she was pretty the way she was before. Why did she change her nose?”
It’s not just about answering the questions. As far as I’m concerned, Disney starlets have a higher obligation to their fans. They have every reason to know that girls, like my second grader, hang on their every move and don’t miss a thing. If a beautiful star like Tisdale thinks there’s something wrong with her physical appearance, how can it not send a message to our daughters that they should doubt their looks, as well.
Ashley, I’m sorry you weren’t happy with your nose. I think it was really was nice before the surgery and I thought you were beautiful. But now that you’ve made the decision to alter your early twenties appearance, I think you owe an explanation to my daughter who’s dieing to see High School Musical III.
If you can’t come up with a better explanation than the supposed deviate septum, I’m going to have to turn off Disney and switch over to Nickelodeon and let my daughter spend more time watching SpongeBob. Because she’s beautiful just the way she is and I don’t want my eight-year-old to be worrying that her nose isn’t right because you weren’t happy with yours.
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I have bad news for you — you can’t switch to Nickelodeon. That’s where they play Zoey 101 with the now pregnant 16 year old Jamie Lynn Spears…*sigh*…
I have to say I’m torn about the Ashley thing. My mom got a nose job when I was a kid. It was something she always wanted to do and frankly, she looked alot better after the surgery. I’ll have to ask her if she worried how her surgery might have affected my self esteem, but I really don’t think she gave it a second thought. It was something she really wanted to do, she was old enough to do it and I think Ashley deserves that right too. And just because my mom got a nose job, it didn’t make me think that I needed one too. I thought she was brave for doing something to make her feel better about herself.
I hear you, though, as a mom of an 8 year old girl that the Ashley thing is a tough one to explain. It’s possible, though, that your little girl was already not liking her nose and maybe she simply identified with Ashley. My absolutely gorgeous daughter (I’m not at all biased either) hates what she perceives to be her too-big teeth (she lost most of her baby teeth at a very early age and she’s got her big girl teeth now) and is strangely sensitive about it.
I tell my daughter that I think she’s beautiful but that everyone has something about their bodies that they don’t like — that’s natural. But usually it’s something that only THEY see — the rest of us just bask in their glory.
Good luck. This is only the beginning of the body issues!
Amy S. | January 8th, 2008 at 2:34 am
I too have a fat nose. I don’t have girls yet but hope to have one and its so hard to figure out how to navigate the messages they get from this world. I have to admit I don’t know Ashley- I know Dora who has a cute little nose lol!
Sister Sassy | January 8th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
why are second graders watching shows about highschoolers anyway? it seems weird. also hs musical looks severely lame. i think ashley tisdale looked better before the surgery. she should have just stayed the way she was. i just saw her on the amanda show back on nickelodeon in the 90s. she was about 12 and looked so good with brown curly hair! she will never have that face back. i couldn’t bear it!
j | January 14th, 2008 at 12:50 pm