Utah mom is slammed for letting her five-year-old daughter bleach her hair

A Utah influencer is under fire for letting her five-year-old daughter bleach her hair after she captured their heartwarming trip to the salon on TikTok.

Demi Lucy May Engemann, who calls herself the “CEO of cool mom” in her bio, shared this week that her little girl Maude was not allowed to go to school for a day and went with her for a mother-daughter hair appointment.

“My daughter asked if she could bleach her hair so she could put pink in it,” the 28-year-old mother explained at the start of the interview. now-viral videowhich has been viewed over 9.7 million times.

The footage shows Maude smiling happily as the hairdresser separates her locks with bits of foil and skilfully highlights her dark blonde hair.

“She was so excited and felt so great,” Engemann wrote in the onscreen text.

Maude looked like she was having a good time in the drawing room, where she got to help mix paint and enjoy some snacks as her tan set. At one point she sweetly gave the camera a thumbs up.

The little girl couldn’t wait to see her new look, and she started clapping after the foils were removed from her hair.

“She got so excited when she saw how blond it was!” explained Engemann, who opted for some lowlights that day.

The influencer’s husband, Bret Engemann, brought them Starbucks while they were being pampered and “walked right past the room” because he didn’t recognize his stepdaughter with her new hair.

“What a fun day with my girl,” she added at the end of the clip.

Engemann also shared some before-and-after videos of Maude happily showing off her new blonde hair, though reactions have been mixed.

While some saw it as a sweet mother-daughter moment, others were quick to put Mother to shame for letting her young child bleach her hair.

“My mom did this to me too and it took me 18 years to get comfortable and love myself as a brunette again,” one commented.

“My mom did this and it just started years of dying and damaging my hair,” someone else said, while another stranger simply asked, “Why????”

“Absolutely not,” agreed one critic. “There are safe dyes to make it pink, bleaching was a hard no.”

Despite all the resistance, there were also plenty of people who came to defend the mother and praise her for letting her daughter experiment with her appearance.

‘This is precious. She will remember this forever,” one fan wrote.

‘Life is so short and this is so much fun’, someone else agrees. This is definitely a core memory for her.’

‘People relax. if [you] see the video the roots were not bleached!!!!’ point it out to someone else. ‘Literally painless and she had a great time and’ [is] love it.’

Engemann addressed the controversy in her latest video, saying she is “exhausted” by all the “mommy-shamers and trolls” who have criticized her for bleaching Maude’s hair.

“You can’t agree, that’s fine,” she noted. “But the moment swearing starts or mom shaming starts based on one decision you don’t agree with, I’m going to put an end to that.”

Engemann explained that her daughter recently came home from school and told her about a friend who dyed her hair purple.

“She’s all about unicorns and Barbies now. She said she wanted some color in her hair, so we went to the store and bought a temporary pink shampoo,” the mother continued.

“She was super excited, but after a few days she thought, ‘I can’t see it. It doesn’t appear like my friend’s.'”

Engemann said she had to explain to her daughter that the reason her friend’s hair color came out brighter was that she had blond hair.

“Then she told me she wanted to put blonde in her hair so the color would show up better,” she recalls.

“I had her dad do it to make sure he’d be okay with that because I know it’s quite a controversial decision, and he agreed that as long as we got it right, take her to a professional.” and just did it right, that would be nice.’

A number of commenters wanted to know why her daughter’s hair wasn’t pink yet, and she explained that they waited until after their family photos were taken.

For those of you who jump to conclusions and say, ‘Oh, this was my decision’ and that ‘I wanted her to be blonde in my family photos’. That’s just not true,’ she retorted.

“I would never do that to my daughter and make her feel like she needs to change something about herself. That’s not the type of person I am. That’s not the type of mother I am, and I would never impose my will on my daughter.’

Engemann also opened up about why she decided to share the footage, which ultimately made her a target for criticism.

“I posted this video because it was such a special and fun moment to be with my daughter, and it’s sad that the internet has to make that negative in any way,” she said.

“If you’re a mother who shames your mother, better do it,” she added.