Jordan wannabe ... Sasha Bennington
Girl wants to be next Jordan
By REBECCA LEY
July 24, 2007
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SASHA Bennington has a spray tan once a week and a new set of acrylic nails once a month. Her hair is bleached white-blonde and regularly boosted with a set of extensions.
She plucks her eyebrows and carefully applies make-up every morning.
Her favourite outfit is a white satin boob-tube dress and Stetson hat.
But Sasha isn’t a Vegas showgirl — she goes to primary school and only turned 11 last week.
While most children her age have been desperately waiting for the arrival of the new Harry Potter, little Sasha has been hanging on for her heroine Jordan’s latest book.
She says: “I’m obsessed with her. I want to be a model like her when I grow up. I want to be famous and get loads of money.”
Sasha’s mum Jayne Harris, a one-time glamour model, claims those who criticise her daughter’s appearance are just jealous.
She says: “They’re just do-gooders who probably have fat kids that they can’t do anything with.
“We’re a good-looking family — she can’t help being good-looking. I just want her to use it to achieve something.”
But with her overly blonde hair and made-up face, Sasha’s photographs eerily echo those of murdered American child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, who was aged just six when she was found strangled in the basement of her Colorado home in 1996.
Jayne has entered Sasha in several child beauty pageants and, seemingly oblivious of the frightening associations with JonBenet, hopes to take Sasha to Orlando later in the year so she can compete in America too.
Generation game ... former glamour model Jayne Harris helps her 11-year-old daughter dress and look just like her
Jayne says, “They take it more seriously out there. The standard is really high.”
She can even see Sasha going down the route of glamour modelling in the future. But her daughter is part of a worrying trend. Forget playing with Barbie dolls, today’s little girls want to look like them.
Or, more accurately, the incredibly popular Bratz dolls — with their provocative fishnet tights and garish make-up.
Bombarded with celebrity images, little girls are growing up devastatingly quickly and, sadly, the situation is getting worse. Last year saw the first Brit beauty pageant for pre-teen girls — already huge in America with an estimated 3,000 held each year.
A poll two years ago revealed 63 per cent of girls would rather be glamour models than nurses, doctors or teachers.
And despite worrying reports last year that one in ten girls aged 12 to 14 thought they needed plastic surgery to improve their looks, Jayne constantly tells Sasha how important appearance is.
She says: “Everyone says it is what’s inside that counts but that’s just a load of rubbish.
“Nobody is going to know what’s inside until they’ve looked at you. If you’re ugly or your hair is in a mess then they aren’t even going to bother to get to know you.”
Sasha, who lives with her construction worker dad Martin, 34, her mum, and brother Max, seven, in Burnley, Lancs, already mimics her mum’s views. The pair giggle and Jayne looks on approvingly as her girl says: “If you’re walking down the street and you’re ugly nobody is going to want to talk to you and you won’t have any friends.”
For Jayne, 30, looking good means fake tans, poker-straight hair and make-up. She uses a sunbed five times a week and religiously straightens her hair.
Despite the 20-year age gap, she doesn’t see anything wrong with her daughter wanting to look like her.
Jayne says: “I don’t mind Sasha having spray tans — she’s a bit too young for sunbeds at the moment. She had her first set of acrylic nails at nine and she’s been wearing make-up since she was four. It washes off, it’s not like it’s scarring her for life.”
Sasha says: “I just want to be pretty because then people will like me.”
But worryingly Sasha is already demonstrating signs of an unhealthy body image. She says, “I think I’m fat, everyone else says I’m not, that I’m as skinny as a twig. I worry about what I eat. I don’t want to put on weight and then not be able to lose it.”
Jayne encourages Sasha to dress like her and says: “We’ll go out dressed the same, in mini skirts and furry boots. She likes to wear what’s in fashion and now she’s a size six can buy clothes from grown-up shops.
“I don’t see anything wrong with her showing her midriff — it’s just skin.”
But it isn’t just the latest hotpants or cropped dresses from Primark — Sasha loves wearing clothes with the Playboy brand that her mum orders from America. Her bedroom is also a pink shrine to Playboy, with a Playboy door curtain, satin duvet set, Playboy pillows and pyjamas.
Jayne says: “Sasha likes the bunny. I don’t think she sees it as anything erotic but she knows Jordan modelled for Playboy and thinks that’s cool.”
Luckily Jayne isn’t preaching the gospel of plastic surgery to her daughter just yet.
She says: “I’m not sure if she knows Jordan had breast implants, she just thinks she looks good. Sasha and I are terrified of needles so I don’t think she’ll be going down that route.”
Dad Martin sounds more of a note of caution about his daughter. He admits: “It’s a concern that Sasha may try to grow up too quick and I think it’s ridiculous she has spray tans.” But he admits he goes along with Jayne’s preening of Sasha because he wants his daughter to fit in, saying: “I’m sure girls at school when they go out to discos have make-up on, so Sasha has to be involved in that or she’ll be an outcast.”
Asked whether she thinks all this is putting her daughter at risk from paedophiles, Jayne says: “Everyone says that but I know where she is 24/7.”
Recently Sasha has suffered bullying at school. She says: “They’re just proper jealous of me. They come up and ask me why I’ve got make-up on.
“Even my friends don’t like me having my hair and my nails done. They think I’m just trying to show off.” And it isn’t only other children who question Sasha’s appearance.
Sasha says: “On my birthday I went to school with my hair done, wearing make-up and a tiara like Jordan. The teachers told me to take it off but I didn’t.”
When asked what she thinks life would be like if she wasn’t pretty, Sasha, glancing over at her mum, says: “My mum would just call me ugly. Everyone would call me ugly. I wouldn’t like that at all.”
It’s a heart-breaking comment to hear from an eleven-year-old child.
The Sun Online - Sun Woman: Girl wants to be next Jordan
11 year old girl wants to be the the next Jordan
These pushy stage mums are so creepy! They didn't succeed at what they wanted to do so have to live through their kids. Sad.
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