Persuasive Essay On Child Beauty Pageants

Stolen Youth “[Child beauty pageants] prematurely sexualize young girls and place too much focus on beauty and appearance at an early age,” Sociologist Hilary Levey Friedman studied the veracity of the pageants themselves. Enter the mind of six-year-old girl, and wander through her most inner imaginations. One who searches her mind might find an elephant cloud in the sky, purple grass, and flowers in her hair. Her dreams are huge: to be a princess, a singer, a doctor, or an artist. Childhood is a beautiful start to someone’s life, but what if someone stole it away from her? An exploration of child beauty pageants reveals the negative truth behind the competitions that exposes children to an unsafe environment, detriments their character,

Turn on the television, and be amazed and frightened at the shows being viewed by many eyes of different ages. Today, popular shows such as “Toddlers & Tiaras” are a specific cause for the uprising of beauty pageants creating “child beauty queens [that] have become media starlets” (Nussbaum np). More young girls that tune into the shows can be inspired or motivated to do as the young girls do on the show. Another show such has “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” has marketed beauty pageants. Young girls might think, “if she can be famous” so can they. Overall, child beauty pageants “in the past twenty years [have] skyrocketed in fame and fortune creating a huge enterprise development” (Arnold np). The rising popularization of pageants has marked the beginning of a frightening

Presently, the amount of pageants and its contributors are high. Currently, there are “about 100,000 beauty pageants held each year in the U.S” (“Beauty” np). The level of the amount of pageants being held is dangerous because it leads to more participants throughout the nation. Many children dream of being a part of pageants; to illustrate the true fame of the contests, there are about “250,000 child contestants [that] participate in beauty pageants” (“Beauty” np). Each of these children is held to a specific standard when applying for the contest. Not only are pageants becoming more of a current source of entertainment, but they are also outrageously expensive with the “average total cost of participating in a single glitz competition [being] 3,000 to 5,000 dollars” (Blue np), which means it is a huge industry in the United States. If more children begin to take part in pageants, we might begin to have higher rates of depression and body