Girl-geared spas enjoy boom

Correction: Because of reporting errors, this story about the popularity of spas geared to young girls included two services that are not available to 4-year-olds at Wishes for Girls in Concord. Services that are offered are haircuts, styles, manicures, and pedicures. Also, the website of author Mimi Doe was incorrect. It is www.spiritualparenting.com.

CONCORD -- While her pedicurist massaged her feet and then trimmed her cuticles, Lexi Blickman perused the pages of Cosmo, checked out the latest hair styles, and chatted about her upcoming trip to Egypt. She peered into a bucket of nail polish bottles and plucked a bright blue named Azure for Sure to be decorated with stripes of Magenta Metallic.

If the colors seem giddy, chalk it up to Blickman's age: 8.

The Band-Aid on her shin?

''Oh that was a bug bite," she said. ''I picked it."

While Blickman and her friends are still a few years away from dating -- or even middle school -- they are not too young for upscale pampering. Indeed, they are part of a boom of children as young as 4 who have started enjoying a day at the spa.

The market for upscale spa services catering to teenagers and grade schoolers is among the fastest-growing segment of an $11 billion industry. Rita Greeley, the owner of Wishes for Girls, where Blickman and her friends went for an afternoon birthday party last month, opened her shop last fall to a steady stream of delighted prepubescent customers. She is already thinking of franchising.

''The time is right," Greeley said. ''People are looking for something like this."

Inside her second-story shop, window seats have colorful cushions and the chairs for the clientele are sized for tykes. ''It's supposed to look like the ultimate girl's fantasy bedroom," Greeley said.

Rooms are labeled ''Little Darlings" for customers ages 4 through 8, ''Tweens" for middle schoolers, and ''When I grow up," for high school students and adults. Services for 4-year-olds include formal updos, manicures and pedicures, perms, and foils.

Spas that are geared to girls began popping up in California and Texas a few years ago, but youth-oriented salons in button-down New England have largely been limited to teenagers.

A decade ago, teens and college students made up less than 10 percent of the Boston spa business, said Lisa Hills, spa director at Beaucage on Newbury Street. Today, they make up a third of their business, routinely dropping $400 for a massage, facial, manicure, and pedicure.

''I guess they get the cash from Daddy," Hill said.

In Wellesley, at the Grettacole Day Spa and Salon, manager Gina Gonnella said that in the last two years she's seen an uptick in high school students getting $200 hair colorings and pedicures.

''This generation is spoiled," she said. ''And to be honest with you, some of the kids who come in really are brats."

Greeley, a 33-year-old former photo editor at the Improper Bostonian, has tapped the next segment: small children. Eight- and 9-year-old girls like Blickman love the ambience, the feeling of being made to feel grown up, the colors and the attention, she said.

On the downside, tweens and their younger siblings can present their own array of challenges, said Stephanie Lapilato, a stylist who admits giving a 4-year-old a pedicure takes a lot of concentration.

''Their feet are so tiny you have to be really careful," she said. Since the little ones have been walking only for a few years, there isn't much in the way of calluses to rub off, or even dead skin. There is even a special name for a child pedicure, a ''mini-peddi."

Whether it's healthy for grade schoolers to spend two hours being so richly pampered is another question.

''It's just more pressure on girls to look a certain away," said Heather Johnston Nicholson, director of Research for Girls Inc., a nonprofit based in New York that works to educate and empower girls ages 6 to 18. ''Girls grow up learning that girls are. Boys grow up learning that boys do. Spas for tweens reinforce that. Girls need to be active, not pampered."

Corinne Blickman, Lexi's mother, scoffed at the idea that a day at the spa has anything to do with her daughter being shoehorned into a narrow, superficial gender role.

''You can be good at sports and smart and still like to look good or have your head rubbed or your feet taken care of," she said. ''A little pampering isn't going to make you any less of a well-rounded person."

But Mimi Doe, a Concord mother of two teenage girls who is also the founder of Spiritualfounder.com and the author of ''Nurturing Your Teenager's Soul," said, ''I worry about a culture that fundamentally looks at teens and tweens as sex objects."

As for the spa: ''I don't think there's anything wrong with a 14-year-old getting a manicure for a special occasion, but for a 3-year-old, frankly, that strikes me as sick."

Greeley said the criticism is overblown. She is positioning her business to promote good hygiene, she said. And the girls who come with their moms, or for birthday parties, love it.

The spa gives them a chance to decompress, Greeley said. Everybody is overscheduled, she said, even elementary school students. ''Girls have been playing dress-up since the dawn of time," she said. ''This is just a new turn on an old trick."

Douglas Belkin can be reached at dbelkin@globe.com