A Memphis mother who proudly filmed her 5-year-old daughter working in her waxing studio is now at the center of a criminal case that has ricocheted from Instagram to the courtroom. What began as a bid to showcase a child learning the family business has turned into an indictment, a child neglect charge, and a broader debate over where “questionable parenting” ends and criminal conduct begins.
Investigators say the girl was allowed to wax the intimate areas of nude adult women while her mother recorded and posted the sessions online. The case has forced child welfare officials, prosecutors, defense lawyers, and the public to confront a deeply uncomfortable question: how far can a parent go in involving a young child in adult workspaces, especially when those spaces involve nudity and social media exposure.
The Instagram posts that triggered an arrest
Authorities in Memphis say the controversy started after a series of images and videos appeared on Jasmine Moss’s Instagram account, where she promoted her hair removal business and showcased her 5-year-old daughter as a tiny technician. According to police, the posts showed the child waxing the nude pubic area of adults, including older women, while Moss filmed and shared the content with her followers on Instagram. Officers later said they received a series of complaints about the disturbing images, prompting an investigation that quickly moved from social media outrage to a criminal probe.
One of the clips that drew the most attention featured Moss celebrating her daughter’s involvement with a caption that read, “When I say I’m passing down Deeds & LLCs to my creators I mean!!!” as the child appeared to work on nude adult clients in a Memphis studio, according to a post shared by local reporters. The images were not fleeting stories but part of a broader branding effort that framed the 5-year-old as an apprentice learning to build “Deeds & LLCs,” language that critics saw as an attempt to normalize a child’s hands-on role in intimate adult services.
From viral backlash to charges and a courtroom fight
Once the posts circulated beyond Moss’s client base, the reaction was swift. Commenters on a widely shared clip reacted with shock as they realized the child was waxing what one viewer described as “definitely private areas,” with some asking how a 5-year-old could be allowed to work on “lips” and other intimate zones while adults lay nude in front of her, according to a viral thread that opened with “Whew! Jasmine Moss faces a judge” on social media. On February 15, officers said they received multiple complaints about those posts, describing them as “disturbing images involving a 5-year-old,” a description later echoed in a separate online update about the case.
Police in Memphis responded by arresting Moss on a child neglect charge after reviewing the footage and interviewing at least three women who said the girl had waxed their nude pubic area while Moss supervised, according to a detailed account of the arrest. Investigators said the reported images had been uploaded directly to Moss’s business page, which she used to market waxing services, and that the 5-year-old had been around dozens of nude adult clients in the studio, according to police records. A separate national report described Moss simply as “Mom” and noted that prosecutors in MEMPHIS, Tenn, charged the Tennessee woman with child neglect after the Instagram posts surfaced, according to court filings.
Indictment, legal strategy, and the “questionable parenting” debate
The case did not stop at a single arrest. By early 2025, a grand jury had indicted the mother, identified in one report as Jan, on charges related to letting her 5-year-old daughter wax adult clients in MEMPHIS, Tenn, a development first detailed when WMC reported that the mother was formally accused of allowing the child to work on nude women. Video from a local broadcast showed officers describing how the Memphis mother had posted several photos online of her daughter waxing adult women, prompting a breaking news update that the woman had been arrested and charged, as seen in a news clip that circulated widely.
As the case moved into the courtroom, Moss’s defense team framed the controversy as a parenting dispute rather than a crime. Attorney Murray Wells Ballin told WREG that “Certainly some questionable parenting… but does that amount to a crime? Our position is that it does not,” arguing that the Department of Children’s Services, or DCS, had already investigated and decided it did not need to remain involved, according to Ballin. In a separate account of the same hearing, the lawyer repeated that “Certainly, some questionable parenting, but does that amount to a crime? Our position is that it does not. DCS investigated this, and they determined they did not need to be involved,” a quote that appeared in a story by Brayel Brown.
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