JWoww's fans defend her decision to dye 4-year-old daughter's hair pink
Jenni “JWoww” Farley has been sharing a lot about her children in the past week. First, she opened up on her website and YouTube channel about 2-year-old son Greyson’s speech delay. Then on Friday, she posted a photo on Instagram depicting a happier moment: her 4-year-old daughter Meilani grinning and enjoying some hot-pink hair.
Right away, fans of the Jersey Shore star gushed about how adorable Meilani looked, noting her resemblance to her reality star mom.
“Golly she’s your CLONE! Beautiful like mama!” a fan wrote.
A post shared by Jenni JWOWW (@jwoww) on Sep 14, 2018 at 5:34am PDT
There were also many ready to defend Farley from the seemingly inevitable onslaught from mom-shamers who would criticize her for dying the young girl’s hair.
“Here come the big bada– group of moms to tell you to never do that to your child’s hair, LMAO f— the haters. You’re a great parent,” read one comment.
“Better to let kids just express themselves in positive ways like this than negative ways,” added another supportive follower.
While there may have been negative comments on the post at some point, they have been deleted. As of this posting, the most negative comment available is this one: “I think it’s cool, but I also worry about her hair falling out before she hits her teens… but if you say it’s safe then more power to you cuz it does look nice.”
Every time a celebrity posts a photo of their child trying on makeup or sporting a new hair color, this “worry” pops up. This year, Amber Rose faced it when she let 5-year-old Sebastian bleach a lock of his hair, and this week Kim Kardashian preemptively told the shamers that she washed off North West’s lipstick after letting her wear it to bribe her to leave the house. When Pink and Carey Hart let 7-year-old daughter Willow dye her hair purple in June, many wondered how safe it was to color children’s hair.
“There are many chemicals that a child could potentially absorb or have an adverse reaction to,” Latanya T. Benjamin, MD, medical director of pediatric dermatology at Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, previously told Yahoo.
For any kind of dye, permanent or temporary, she recommended patch-testing for allergic reactions by dabbing a bit of the dye behind the child’s ear and letting it remain there for 24 hours.
Many commenters on Farley’s post shared questions and advice about temporary dyes to use on kids. Some like the age-old Kool-Aid trick while others like semi-permanent dyes like Manic Panic and Arctic Fox. Though they’re vegan and nontoxic, they aren’t necessarily recommended for very young children, whose hair is finer than an adult’s.
“The chemicals in color, even the temporary Manic Panic dyes, will damage the fine hair of your little dude or dudette,” colorist Lisa Haley told Romper.
Parents might instead want to experiment with hair chalk or temporary spray.
Though JWoww has been mum about what she used to turn Meilani’s hair pink, she wrote a recent blog post wondering if the chemicals in her favorite lavender-scented products might be hurting her kids. It might be safe to assume, then, that she’s taking their health seriously — with or without the help of her Instagram followers.
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