Child Beauty Pageants Should Be Banned

Child beauty pageants are traced back all the way to 1855, when P.T. Barnum hosted a “National Baby Show” where children were paraded around and judged by their appearance (The Baby Show). Although Barnum exploited other children—twins, triplets, and overweight infants(parallel)— and banned those who identified as poor and foreign, adolescent beauty pageants still share the same concept today. Child beauty pageants have blown up since then, making it a $5 billion industry (Blue). One child benefited from this industry, but paid for it in the end(parallel). Jonbenét Ramsey was the star of the child beauty pageant world; she held various titles such as America's Royal Miss, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, Little Miss Charlevoix Michigan,

Parents are displaying their children as sexual targets for pedophiles, which is rather contradictory. Young women, especially toddlers, who are not as capable of making decisions should not be sexualized in that sort of manner. Hollandsworth states in his article, "...pedophiles who had gone to great lengths to obtain videos of little girls walking around provocatively, pulling their shirts down off their shoulders and smiling at the camera." The children act in a promiscuous manner for the sake of a beauty pageant, which attracts pedophiles. Unfortunately, it is not difficult to specifically target pageant children. “On TV, they are not only giving out the names of these children, but they also tell you what towns these little girls live in,” (Hollandsworth). Pageant children are significantly easier to target because any person can turn on the television and find out who these girls are and where they are located. Although an age limit will not indefinitely cease the pedophilia problem within beauty pageants, it will certainly steer them away from toddlers who are physically unable to defend themselves. Davidson elaborates on how the media and the sexual exposing of participants in child beauty pageants attracts