This is the first year that my 9-year-old daughter hasn't put any toys on her Christmas list.

(I would say it's our first toy-free Christmas in 14 years. Technically, however, the PS3 my husband and sons have requested is considered a toy.)

The girl has asked for sets of books she wants to read and an art kit along with some Wacky Packages stickers. Nothing I can object to there.

This is the first year in a long time that she hasn't asked for a makeup kit, and I can't object to that either.

My daughter has been drawn to makeup for years now.

As a play-time activity, applying makeup is right up there with making mixtures of various kitchen ingredients, swiping all the playing cards in the house and taping them to sheets of paper, and trying to sell various objects from her bedroom to her siblings and parents for a profit.

I have limited her makeup purchases so far to various forms of lip gloss and nail polish.

Her facility with nail polish puts mine to shame. Of course, I did not grow up getting manicures. My daughter, on the other hand, has been getting them since she was about 6.

I had my first manicure at the age of 35 or so. Part of this is due to my unfortunate habit of biting my nails. Until my mother introduced me to the miracle of acyrilic nails, it never seemed to make any sense to spend money on something I would likely chew off.

The other thing is the proliferation of nail salons over the past 10 years. A manicure was a luxury item in my childhood, but now it's an affordable treat.

For the cost of a visit to an ice cream parlor, I can spare my daughter from hangnails and get her nails painted in some sparkly purple polish.

The idea of paying someone to massage my daughter's feet and paint her toenails, by contrast, seemed decadent. I held off on letting her have a pedicure until she was a little bit older.

In the end, though, I succumbed to the cuteness of the special kids' pedicure chairs. Who wouldn't want to sit in a panda chair and get their toenails painted blue?

Last week's Baltimore Sun Tween Tuesday blog post focused on spa services for 11-year-olds, specifically on the question of whether girls are being encouraged to focus too much at an early age on their appearance.

My daughter and I have discussed this very question on multiple occasions. But what we talk about is the pressure on girls and women to focus on their attractiveness to men at the expense of their personal development in other areas.

She has inherited her Babushka's graceful long fingers and beautifully shaped nails, and I encourage her to take pleasure in keeping her hands well groomed. But that's exactly what it is — a matter of grooming.

I understand how mothers of girls with lots of visible body hair might seriously consider getting their pre-teens — and even pre-tweens — waxed if their daughters are being mocked by peers.

It's not for me to say whether they're right or wrong, whatever choice they make. But I hope they're talking about the right and wrong of society judging women and girls by their body hair or lack thereof.

Now on to the next philsophical question: why am spending more money on manicures for my daughter and hair care products for her 14- and 12-year-old brothers than I am on my own appearance?