Child Beauty Pageants

Behind the Glamour of Child Beauty Pageants In a world where padded bras and skimpy clothes are available for children ages eight and younger, parents spend small fortunes on make-up, costumes, and hair extensions for their child to win beauty pageants. In 1996, 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey—a pageant regular—was murdered, bringing national attention to the child beauty pageant circuit (Ralston). This case received national attention, not only because JonBenet was found bludgeoned in her own home, but because of the many images released of her that showed a sexualized child wearing expensive costumes and being made up to look two decades older (Harvey). Children should not be allowed to compete in beauty pageants because they teach children that

Some claim that they help boost self-esteem but that is just not true. India Knight states in her article titled, France had said ‘non’ to those creepy child beauty pageants-why don’t we? that “no confidence was ever bred by a child being judged on its looks.” She also goes on to say that pageants involve “the indoctrination of the poor children… that all that matters are looks, ‘glamour’, and ‘sparkle’” (Knight). Not only do the pageants teach that outer beauty is everything, they also “encourage girls to change their looks to fit narrow, invented standards of beauty” (O’Neill). With so much pressure being put on them to look good, they can lose confidence and even possibly suffer from eating

The parents of these contests, says Knight, are “creepy and frustrated with dull, unlived lives, desperate for escape from drudgery, which they choose to seek out through the medium of slapping fake tan on infants and parading them about like monkeys” (Knight). This is a major problem because since the parents are in charge of their child’s wardrobe, they often choose the eerily revealing clothing to win over the judges and for the attention that both they and their child receive. Knight also says that another part of pageants are the adults creepily judging the children while they sport layers of make-up and “grown-up outfits” (Knight). This judgment of child bodies is wrong and under, daily circumstances would be considered inappropriate and