The Ugliness Of Child Beauty Pageants

The Ugliness Of Child Beauty Pageants

`While I was flicking through the channels one boring Saturday afternoon, I came across a show that sparked my interested yet deeply disturbed me. Toddlers and Tiaras is a new show that portrays the hard work that the beauty pageant contestants must endure in order to gain the winning crown. They must have beautiful hair, perfect teeth, a face fill of make-up, extravagant outfits and a beautiful tan to glisten under the spot-light while still wearing diapers. Beauty pageants for children have been around since the early 1920s with the amount of participates steadily increasing over the years. According to the article by Marc Ransford, “Children's beauty pageants have been around as long as adult contests with the Miss America program starting in the 1920s” (Ransford). While it primarily consists of girls, some pageants do allow male contestants to strut their stuff. So kids from one month to 7 years of age are then judge on their outfit selection, stage presences and of course beauty. According to the article “The Child Beauty-Pageant Queens Who Grew Up”, “thousands of these pageants were taking place every weekend across the Southern states, featuring girls as young as nine months” (The Sunday Times). While I realize the importance of keeping children actively involved in activities, I believe that children under the age of sixteen should not participate in beauty pageants. The reasons why young children should not be involved in beauty pageant are because it causes low self-esteem, sexually exploits young children and is usually heavily pressured by the parents.

The famous poet Khalil Gibran once said “Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart” (HeartQuotes). Unfortunately, most child beauty contestants are judge primarily on how cute they look on stage. Unlike Miss America pageants, judges do not ask or even care about what these playful girls really think about the world around them. While a section of the pageant is dedicated to the talent of these young contestants, it really comes down to the amount of make-up, hairspray, and how beautiful these girls look compared to the other contestants. In the early 1920’s, when child beauty pageants first began, all children under the age of six were only allowed to participate in Natural Beauty Pageant. Natural beauty pageants consist of a toddler wearing his or her Sunday-best outfit; No make-up, no tanning, and no fake hair were allowed for these pageants. But as the years progressed, Glitz beauty pageants became much more popular. According to the website Children Beauty Pageant, “Glitz pageants are normally known for having the children wear makeup. It is similar to a natural pageant but with more relaxed rules on dress and appearance. They tend to pay the most to their winners as it tends to attract more seasoned pageant competitors” (Children Beauty Pageant). While Glitz beauty pageants are suppose to be all about the child having fun, in reality it can cause major self esteem complication for the child then and even more in the future. Self-esteem is an aspect of life that helps form our identity. While beauty pageants were thought to improve a child’s value and worth, and help form their identity, through research we find this to actually be completely false. According to Danielle Crandal, the author of The Negative Aspects of Child Beauty Pageants, “The lifestyle of child beauty pageant participants has proven to be one full of stress and negative self-evaluation which can ultimately lead to a number of mental and physical disorders as the children become older” (1). When you think about the overall picture of beauty pageants, it’s easy to see the wrong impression it is giving to the contestants. In a beauty pageant community, beauty is everything. You win crowns, money, scholarships, and proud parents by being beautiful. But feeling and being beautiful can sometimes be too stressful for a child. Nicole Hunter, a former child beauty contestant and the writer of Effects of Beauty Pageant wrote:
I don’t even know what it is to feel attractive without make-up on my face. Until recently, whenever I saw my mother and I wasn’t wearing make-up of some sort she would literally pull a tube of lipstick out of her purse and say, “You need make-up.” Perhaps it’s because I have worn make-up on my face since the age of four. This was when I competed in my first beauty pageant. When children enter beauty pageants at too young of an age, they can develop poor self-image, low self-esteem and even eating disorders (Hunter).
The make-up, fake hair, fake teeth are only causing the child to believe that naturally they are not beautiful. The constants need for make-up is only one after-effect of being a child beauty contestant. Some children also developed superficial views about life. Beauty becomes the number one priority to these children. This leads to judging the people around them solely on how they may look and not by a person’s actually personality. On an episode of Toddlers and Tiaras, competing twin-sister AshLyn and BreAnne Sterling have a bitter argument about who was prettier in their pageant gown. AshLyn and BreAnne are only six years old. While I know from experience that fighting and arguments are natural occurrence for siblings, I have never once had a heated debate with my two older sisters about who was prettier. At the age of six, this idea never came across my mind. For pageants girls, this occurs every day.

In primarily all pageants, the contestants are expected to grace the stage in their best fitting swim suites. They are judge on the newest style of the swim suites, how it fits, and the figure of the contestants. In child beauty pageants, this is no different. Young children must sashay down the stage in nothing more than a bikini. This causes the child to assume that skinny is beautiful. As the child becomes older, this idea still remains. According to the article Media, Eating Disorders and Girls, “Young girls are starting to diet at younger ages and exposure from the media promoting beauty contests doesn’t help this” (Williams). Eating disorders are becoming a popular way to achieve that swim suite figure. “ 15% of young women have some kind of disordered eating patterns” (Williams).

Allowing children to prance around on stage with only a bikini on is not only causing body image deceptions but may be sexually exploiting these innocent children. According to Mark Davidson, the author of Is the media to blame for child sex victims?,
The nation must face the disturbing implications of the fact that parents--the very people who should be the most outraged by the sexual exploitation of youngsters--have been the principal supporters of hundreds of media-hyped children's "beauty pageants." These pageants commercially flaunt kids' bodies, often converting preteen and preschool girls into sex puppets adorned with lipstick, mascara, false eyelashes, bleached hair, high heels, and satin-and-rhinestone gowns and professionally coached in showgirl postures and movements.
To the beauty pageant community, this statement seemed preposterous until the death of beauty pageant star JonBenet Ramsey. On December 26, 1996, JonBenet was found murdered in the basement of her Boulder, Colorado home. She was found to be sexually assaulted and died of strangulation. While conspiracy about the case has caused for speculation, a problem with beauty pageant has been unveiled. Too much sexuality is present during a competition. According to the article Sexy Babies: How Sexualization Hurts Girls, “In child beauty pageants, girls as young as five wear fake teeth, make-up, and hair extensions, and are encouraged to flirt with the audience by batting their false-eyelash-laden eyes” (Sexy Babies: How Sexualization Hurts Girls). The idea of sexually exploiting a child should be enough reason why to avoid entering a child into a beauty pageant but some parents still continue to pay for make-up, fake hair, fake teeth and expensive outfits to have their child’s beauty judge by others.
Parents are the number one reason why children beauty pageants still exist to this day. No matter how much these parent spends, or the amount of self-esteem their children lose, the parent still continue to enter and train their children to be beauty contestants. Danielle Crandal stated “As most children are not capable of making the decision to enter beauty pageants before they can speak it is obviously the decision of parents to place their children into these negative settings” (2). The parents convince themselves that beauty pageants are fun for the child and support high self esteem, but reality these parents are in complete denial. The parents, usually referred as stage moms, must pressure the child to practice their talent and spend hours dressing and styling them. According to Daniel Cook, “that the children – some as young as 3 or 4 and as old as 14 – had been “brainwashed” by the parents to participate in the pageants and were serving as vehicles for the realization of their mother’s dashed dreams of being a beauty queen”(1). Are these stage moms living there dream through the oblivious innocent children or are they actually hypnotized by the thought that beauty pageants are actually character building? Either reason, it is unbelievable that parents would want their child to go through this stress at such a tender age.

Nearly 250,000 children participate in beauty pageants across the world. While some of the prizes may include cash money, scholarships, and extravagant crowns, none of this is worth the traumatic effect it may cause to the child. While winning a crown can cause an immediate confidence boost, the lasting effects of beauty pageants still linger on. Self-esteem is a hard and complicated concept for young girls to realize and gain. Beauty pageants are causing this process to be even more difficult. I believe that beauty pageants give the contestant a fake sense of self-esteem instead of being confident of who they without the glitz and glam. Child beauty pageants have been sexually exploiting young children with their parent permission. In order for this to stop, beauty pageants must end. As I have stated before, child beauty pageants continue to go on because of the parents that are willing to enter their child in one. Without parents pressuring their child, I believe that beauty pageants would not exist.

That Saturday afternoon of boredom has caused me to realize a serious matter that is going on with young girls today. While I have never entered a beauty pageant myself, I was able to see the stress of beauty pageant contestants endure by the show Toddlers and Tiaras. I believe beauty pageant causes a child to grow up too quickly. In the article by Marc Ransford, Marcia Summers, a psychology professor stated “"We are denying some of these children their childhood, which is something you can never get back, At age 20, you can't get together with a bunch of friends and play in the dirt or play cars. You'd look and feel pretty silly" (Ransford). We should allow the child to mature enough to decided themselves if they want to enter a beauty pageant. Until then, we should leave the make-up, fake teeth, and fake hair wearing to the stage moms themselves.



Annotated Bibliography
Cook, Daniel T. "When a Child is Not a Child, aand Other Conceptual Hazards of Childhood Studies." Childhod 16.1 (2009): 5-10. Feb. 2009. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. .

The author, Daniel Cook, describes the influences on children that may cause a negative effect on their childhood. One of the influences he mentions is the effects of beauty pagaents. He looks at the topic from both angles. While beauty pagaents may cause self esteem issues, it also might be a rude awaking to the harsh reality of life.

Crandell, Danielle. "The Negative Aspects of Child Beauty Pageants." Lifestyle. 30 July 2008. Web. 20 Feb. 2010.

This article discusses all the effects of child beauty pageants. I will use this to back up my claims.

Davidson, Mark. "Is the media to blame for child sex victims?" USA Today Magazine 126.2628 (1997): 60. EBSCO Host. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. .

This article looks at the extreme effects of child beauty pageant. It compares the pageant to child pornography which may be a factor on child sex victims.

"HeartQuotes." Quotes of the Heart. 2007. Web. 19 Feb. 2010.
This website has numerous quotes from various writers and poets. I will use one of the quotes to discuss beauty.

Hunter, Nicole. "Effects of Beauty Pageants." Writing.com. 2007. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.
This article is about the experience that Nicole Hunter had with beauty pageants. She began pageants at an early age and recaps the effects it had on her life.

Gleick, Elizabeth, and Cathy Booth. "Playing at Pageants." Playing at Pageants 149.3 (1997): 48. EBSCO Host. Web. 16 Feb. 2010. .
The authors starts the article by describing the brutal murder of JonBenet Ramsys. This is one of the most notable tragedy that impacted the beauty pagaent community. They also note the phsychological pressure from the parents.

Ransford, Marc. "Professor says Beauty Pageants Aren't for Kids." Education Redefined. Ball State University, 17 Feb. 1997. Web. 21 Feb. 2010.
This article looks into the history of beauty pageants and the effects it has on its contestant. It describes how long the beauty pageants have been around and has the psychological opinion of a psychiatrist on how it effect its contestants.

"Sexy Babies: How Sexualization Hurts Girls." About Kids Health. 11 May 2007. Web. 20 Feb. 2010.
This describes how children today are dressing and acting sexier than ever. They believe that beauty pageants are encouraging this behavior

The Sunday Times. "The Child Beauty-Pageant Queens Who Grew." Times Online. 25 May 2008. Web. 20 Feb. 2010.
Williams, Sandra. “Media, Eating Disorders and Girls”. Suite101. 26 March 2007. 19 Feb. 2010This website give statistics about eating disorders and the link between