Every day, a huge amount of little girls are exposed to situations that they aren’t yet mature enough to deal with. Make-up, photo shoots, fake lashes, beauty contests, and pageants are just a few examples. It was time to change the way we approach little girls and makeup.

To prove that they aren’t old enough to be wearing make-up and should only ever use it to play, we replaced the professional make-up artists with little girls, on one of the most popular TV shows in Australia and in a fashion photo shoot with Australian Miss Universe Tegan Martin.

The result: chaotic, messy and fun make-up. We invited all those who were interested in supporting the cause to let a little girl do their make-up and share the result using #letgirlsbegirls.

We replaced professional make-up artists of popular Australian TV show Studio 10 with two girls less than 10 years old.

The program’s hostess Jessica Rowe appeared live with her face fully made-up by one of the little girls. This began a debate on how the social context affects little girls in terms of sexualization.

We then replicated this at a fashion photo shoot with Australian Miss Universe Tegan Martin where a 6-year-old girl was put in charge of doing her make-up before the shoot.

Lastly, we got mothers involved inviting them to support the cause by allowing their little girls to do their make-up and share the results using #letgirlsbegirls

The action and the backstage were shared on social media to extend the reach of the invitation.

All within 1 week of campaign launch:

3,000,000 reach

2,000,000 impressions

1,000 shares/comments

Website traffic 25,000 unique visitors

Over 200 uploads to campaign hashtag

PR media value $100,000