Child Beauty Pageants: Do Caked Faces Take the Cake? “Click, click, click.” The sound of a six year old prancing on stage in five inch stilettos, pounds of makeup on their once pretty, raw faces, and self tan packed on their skin. This is a scene from a child beauty pageant. These pageants encourage young girls to become someone they are not. Many young woman that have participated in pageants as young girls, still do not love their bodies. Yet, the industry is multiplying quickly. Although child beauty pageants teach participants valuable life skills, in the midst of that, pageants set a unrealistic standard for beauty causing young adolescents to develop self-esteem issues and use too many self-altering substances. Beauty pageants cause self-esteem …show more content…
For example, this author stated,“When children compete, they develop confidence and learn skills such as poise, good sportsmanship and, in most cases, how to lose gracefully. Overall, the experience boosts their self-esteem”(Are child beauty pageants beneficial for children?") Eventually, trying to become “perfect” takes over the brain. Therefore, the life skills they once learned from beauty pageants as a child, go out the window. A mother of child in pageants said, “... the children 's pageant world "brings a lot of kids out of their shells"(“Innocence in Evening Gowns"). Even though children could become more outgoing, in the process of that, a child receives unrealistics expectations of their body. The issues that develop from taking part in pageants as a child, overpower the life skills taught from pageants. To illustrate, one author states, “Unrealistic expectations to be thin, physically beautiful, and perfect are at the heart of some disordered eating behaviors and body dissatisfaction” (Cartwright). Children who compete, spend an abundance of hours trying to become “flawless”. Hence the reason they completely forget about the skills they learned in pageants when they were younger. In this article, the author stated, “Opponents sag pageants put too much emphasis on looks. ‘Many of these kids grow up with a never-ending drive for physical perfection,’ Martina Cartwright tells JS. Her research on child pageants was recently published in a medical journal. ‘This can lead to eating disorders and poor self-esteem’” (Cartwright). This quote expresses that the pageant is judged on looks, instead of one’s attributes and qualities. Beauty pageants teach participants skills that could be used later in life, however, eating disorders and other issues, that materialized from child beauty pageants, suppress the life skills previously
The article, Toddlers and Tiaras written by Skip Hollandsworth first came about in the August 2011 issue of Good Housekeeping. The article tells us about the world of child pageantry and attempts to convince the readers that the girls participating are being exploited and hypersexualized on stage. He also suggests that some parents are to blame referring to the American Psychological Association Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls quoting “...parents who put their daughters in pageants can contribute “in very direct and concrete ways” to “the precocious sexualization” of their daughters (Hollandsworth 493). The author uses imagery, professional references, and shadowing the pageant world to put this article together and give the readers
1. Lord Baltimore Lord Baltimore was the first of the English elites who received a proprietary colony from Charles I to populate, administrate, and protect. The king at the time was rewarding noblemen shares of the Virginia Company’s surrendered territories to create English colonies. Baltimore acquired his portion in 1632, with alleviation from royal taxation, the authority to employ judges, and the privilege of assembling a resident nobility. Baltimore intended the colony he named Maryland to be a sanctuary for England’s small population of victimized Catholics.
It was stated that most of the parents who enter these competitions have modest incomes. With that in mind, “Some of these families spend $75,000 a year on pageants; they could do a lot more in terms of expanding their daughters’ sense of possibilities with that money.” These are the words of journalist and author of Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Peggy Orenstein (¶ 35), who believes that pageants take away opportunities from the
The overall expense for kids to participate in them is considerably lower, mainly because there is far less to buy. Most natural pageants don 't permit such artifice as spray tans and wigs. Cosmetics are spare, and clothes often come from off the rack. Lori Lee, from Richlands, N.C., knows both glitz and natural pageants well. A former contestant herself, she 's been co-director for the Miss America preliminary circuit and a judge and director for the Miss North Carolina Sweetheart Pageants.
She hopes to become a track professor at one of the major universities someday. She started joining beauty pageants at a later age, 21, while earning a degree and raising scholarship money. The new beauty queen was
Treays, the director of the 1996 documentary ‘Painted Babies’ has presented the idea that the beauty pageant industry is promoting the over-sexualisation and exploitation of young children. Forcing children into the beauty pageant industry is forcing them to grow up faster and lose their childhood, something that is irreplaceable. Furthermore, it incorrectly teaches young girls that they need makeup and clothes to be beautiful, which has a detrimental effect on their self-esteem in the long run. Treays has effectively used an array of techniques to suggest these ideas, including dialogue and camera angles. Treays has used documentary techniques, including ideational montage sequences, dialogue and actuality combined with dramatization, to present
In “Toddlers in Tiaras” there is a wide variety of concepts discussed and Hollandsworth's opinion on any of them is relatively cut and dry as he provides commentary on the events of the article in a way that is easy to decipher if the context is understood. Hollandsworth’s thesis idea can be stated as such - The pageant industry pulls in mothers and daughters alike with the allure of fame and fortune using various avenues such as toy production and media coverage. These little girls are plunged into an expensive world of neuroticism and are coaxed into semi-sexual performances for judges who determine their self-worth - whether they enjoy what they do or not, it is an extremely damaging environment for these girls to be in. The mothers of these pageant girls are subconsciously pushing them to live a life they wanted for themselves and this vicarious relationship leads to an array of lifelong trauma and experience that has been shown to impact past pageant stars as well. This thesis idea can be split up into a few different themes that correlate to the essential message - sexualization, popularization, and socialization.
Skip Hollandsworth’s “Toddlers in Tiaras” argues the negative effects of participating in beauty pageants for young girls. Hollandsworth supported his argument through the use of the following techniques: narratives, testimonies, logical reasoning, appeals to emotion, facts, and an objective tone that attempts to give him credibility. These techniques are used to help persuade his audience of the exploitation of young girls in beauty pageants and the negative effects that pageants will have on their lives. Hollandsworth begins his article with how a typical beauty pageant runs and describes the multiple steps Eden Wood, a pageant contestant, goes through in order to get ready for a competition (490).
My soccer team’s season just ended. We won our game 6-1 and I scored 5 of them. I got handed a trophy, everyone else who really tried got one too . Then, they handed one to Timmy. Timmy showed up to three practices and stinks.
Children beauty pageants can affect them mentally and physically. “"The Princess Syndrome" as I like to call it, is a fairy tale. Unrealistic expectations to be thin, physically beautiful, and perfect are at the heart of some disordered eating behaviors and body dissatisfaction.” (Children Beauty Give Children Unrealistic Expectations) “The Princess Syndrome” is one of the worst effects that can happen to the child because they can kill themselves from starvation for having unrealistic expectations for their bodies.
This is why I think child beauty pageants should be banned because they get sexualised and also their confidence/self-esteem will be lowered at such a young age. People are convinced that the contestants only turn up on the day and prepare on the day. However, this is not the case, because the contestants go to extreme lengths to win so they will prepare all year, this shows the pageants are being drummed into their brains 24/7. A two day rehearsal then takes place before the show to ensure that everything can go without a glitch. This is basically the theft of childhood, there is plenty of time as an adult to face this pressure without competing and failing at such a tender age.
Beauty Pageants deprive children of their confidence and childhoods because they lower girls self esteem. In today 's society, many magazines, movies, and runways pressure women to look a certain way, and to act a certain way. Young girls, even girls as young as one years old, can be affected by today’s obsession with fitness and perfection. These girls can take drastic measures to change what they look like, even going as far as starving themselves (Freymark 29). Beauty pageants are notorious for highlighting outward looks,and to many girls who believe that they are not beautiful enough, being judged on one 's appearance can cause a devastating blow to a girl’s confidence.
So when people look and see that they don’t look like they’re favorite super-model it can put a downer on their self-confidence. This causes many girls feeling that they aren’t good enough in society, society won’t accept them because they aren’t perfect and they start to not like their body. When for many females they can’t lose as much weight as their friend can just because of their genes and how they were born. “The lack of connection between the real and ideal perception of their own body and firm willingness to modify their own body and shape so as to standardize them to social concept of thinness…” (Dixit 1), being focused on unrealistic expectations can cause women to lose themselves and change their attitude on how they view their body, and not for the better.
“You develop a great love for yourself”(Jennifer Trujillo). Two point five million girls participate in a hundred thousand beauty pageants each year in the US, but only 6 percent had suffered from depression. Some individuals think that some people in society get depression from being in beauty pageants, but that is false. People do sometimes develop depression from beauty pageants because of stress but that is very limited. "I developed a thick skin and reeled off a quick response when I was asked on a radio show how I could "parade myself around like a piece of meat.
Beauty Pageants Banned: How Harmful are Beauty Pageants? Imagine seeing someone make their crying eight year old go up on stage in front of everyone, with mascara starting to drip down her face and she's tripping over her enormous dress. What would other parents think? Child Beauty pageants should be banned because they most often become dangerous for a young child to be in.