Essay On Pageant Parents Are To Blame For The Exploitation Of Their Children

Pageant Parents are to Blame for the Exploitation of Their Children
Until the death of 6-year-old beauty queen Jonbenet Ramsey, the child pageant circuit was never fully recognized on a national scale. In the past 17 years, many shows have attempted to give the country a glimpse into the the life of a child beauty queen, however, they are quite over dramatic. Although some sources of media may mislead a viewer to believe the child pageant system is exploitive and sexualizes the young contestants, research shows the decisions of some parents are truly to blame, not the pageants themselves.
Although the pageant system can be a place to sprout new relationships, for many it does nothing but tear them down. Every parent wants their child to avoid the mistakes they, as parents, had made earlier in life in order to be the best they can be. Many pageant parents take this to the next level and use the child to live life again and pursue every opportunity they could have possibly missed as they were growing up. How is a child supposed to live their own life if they're forced to be a pawn in their parents game? Not only do pageants affect the parent-child relationship, it also affects the way children choose friends for the rest of their life. Heidi Gerkin, a former pageant star with titles such as America's Junior Miss, says that she has been more comfortable with having more male friends because of her previous experiences with deceiving friendships in the pageant systems. She says "Even now, whenever I meet somebody, I question whether they really like me" (Goode, Laura). The relationship the pageant systems affects the mostis the relationship with oneself. It is very rare for a girl to claim she has never felt self-conscious, especia...

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...ing to recurrenttantrums thrown in the publics’ eye. Children are people, if you deprive them of their health, you are depriving them of their lives.
The biggest influences on children are their parents, but what if those “role models” make very poor decisions in front of their child? Martina Cartwright described an account of one pageant in which a father, dressed as Hugh Hefner, carried his young daughter on stage, in front of an audience, dressed as a Playboy Bunny (Blue, Alexis). Isn’t it a parents job to protect their child's innocence as long as possible, especially the father, but this one is throwing it away before she can even claim it. In the pageant system the judges do not want to see a child dressed as an adult magazine star. Not only do we question this father’s morals, we also need to take a glance into another mother seen on the show. This mother