Beauty pageants present meaningless values for present-day society. Dated back from 1928 when the first international pageant was created, it has highly influenced the world into thinking that beauty is of vital significance for everyone. Teenage girls dreamt of standing on the stage, attaining grandeur and radiance in beauty. What may seem as a magnificent stage, however, turns out to be a vile stage designed only to depthless understanding of beauty. This essay will show how most of the beauty pageants in the world only promote beauty in a superficial way of judging, hence distorting the image of beauty on the public and leading to a variety of negative issues.
The most prominent effect of beauty pageants is that they keep brainwashing society
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Nevertheless, those factors have slowly sled to extinction over the past years, creating bigger emphasis on physical appearance. In addition, similar to most competitions such as singing or drawing, beauty contestants could serve as a role model for the audience, as Demi stated that she got the opportunity to be a role model for women and men and young girls from all around the world (Moraski, 2017). Despite the fact where they serve as a role model is true, the audience correlates the admiration directly to physical appearance, even though facial features are permanent. Still, pressured by the perfect image of beauty, most girls will reflectively scan through the list of her traits that differ from her model of beauty’s and regard them as aberration even though that distinctive feature might not be distressing. The anxiety will subsequently lead to obsession with makeups, and some may even go for plastic surgery. In 2016 alone, cosmetic procedures achieved a three percent growth over 2015, with a number of 17.1 million in United States. Among the top five were breast augmentation, liposuction, and nose reshaping (American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2017). These statistics shows how insecure people are, distorted by the concept of beauty that has been drilled onto them by those role
The judges of the Miss America pageant have changed through the years to reflect the changing ideals of the pageant itself. “In the early years of the pageant, the judges were primarily artists and illustrators, in part because such men – and they were all men – were considered to have the best eye for the beautiful feminine form. In more recent years, efforts have been made to attract judges who represent the various facets of the pageant” (Banet-Weiser 54). The selection of judges from the fields represented in the pageant show that the Miss America pageant is more than just a strictly beauty pageant. “Defining beauty is an elusive, if not impossible task. No single definition fits because as culture evolves, so does the...
Beauty pageants that involve children are a booming industry and growing fast in popularity. This is partially because of television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras and Living Dolls, which glorify pageants that threaten the innocence of childhood. According to Lucy Wolfe, “in 2011, three million children participated in pageants across the country” (454). With so many children, some as young as six months old, partaking in pageants and countless more aspiring to be pageant princesses, a closer look needs to be taken at the practices that are used to prepare them for the show. Often working long hours, not only prepping for the pageant but also performing in it, the children have no laws protecting them from being harmed or exploited. There are multiple negative effects associated with pageant participation law makers need to take action and find a way to regulate the trends of these controversial displays that sexualize young children.
... beauty pageants." Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada] 9 Mar. 2012: L4. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 10 Feb. 2014.
American’s unneeded celebration of beauty in the pageantry world is digging a hole for the country and has been the contributing factor to the downward spiral we are presently in. The system of this pageant needs to change tremendously in order for it to become a beneficial contest in the future. Beauty pageants to...
" In the end, children’s beauty pageants are essentially harmful to both young girls safety and minds. It may not happen to some, but most of the young girls that compete in beauty pageants seem to have a bit of an attitude towards their parents and other people who will not cooperate with them.... ... middle of paper ... ...
Flipping through the pages of Vogue's latest edition, 23 year-old Susan seems quite upset. She struggles with the thought of lacking the perfect body and delicate features in order to be considered attractive. Surprisingly, Susan is not alone in this kind of an internal struggle. In contemporary society, every other woman aspires to have the lips of Angelina Jolie and the perfect jaw line of Keira Knightley. Society today looks down upon individuals that do not fit in, whether in terms of body shape or facial attractiveness. This forces them to consider the option of 'ordering beauty.' Since cosmetic surgery is no longer a social taboo in America given its widespread popularity, more people are promoting it which ultimately affects the rest of the world due to the unwavering influence of American culture. Cosmetic surgery should be deterred in the US because it promotes the idea of valuing appearance over ability, gives rise to unrealistic expectations, and brings with it high cost to society.
Have you ever considered entering a beauty pageant because it seemed fun? These beauty pageants do appear to be fun but they can have a lasting effect on your perception of beauty. Even though beauty pageants build confidence through performance and help boost careers, they harm society by lowering self-esteem, putting too much emphasis on beauty at a young age, and also providing unrealistic images of beauty.
Beauty pageants demand that competitors spend large amounts of money in synthetic enhancement. This is a poor focus for vulnerable girls and destroys the girls at a very young age. Beauty pageants convince girls that outer beauty is more important than inner beauty, which is totally a false claim. In this paper, we are going to talk about the pros and cons, whys and woes of pageants and if they are manipulative or valuable to kids. Even though that beauty pageants are a good way for girls to make friends. Beauty pageants are harmful to young children and they should not be able to compete until adulthood because beauty pageants teach kids that outer beauty is more important than inner beauty and beauty pageants pose a threat to the safety of children.
Issues regarding the purpose of beauty pageants alarm women since majority of the beauty pageants are for them. Let us look at the good side of beauty pageants. First, allows the use...
Modern beauty contests started in the United States of America in 1880 with the first Miss United States bathing beauty contest held at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Since then, beauty pageants had been popular in many parts of the world. Miss Universe, Miss World and Miss International, participated in every year by more than fifty countries, ceaselessly attracts huge audiences and supporters. The biggest, the Miss World competition, had been running annually since 1951, and although it is less popular in the UK now than it was in 1968, when it attracted 27.5 million TV viewers, it still attracts an enormous worldwide audience of up to 3 billion viewers in 120 countries. [1] Although the main purpose of these pageants are to empower women, the crowned winners are also traveling around the world in order to support causes like HIV/AIDS and children's charity organizations. [2] Due to the success of these internationally produced pageants, various beauty contests for different classes of age, sex and sexuality stemmed up. However, even with the huge diversity, the content of each pageants have almost always been the same: all of them are comprised of the mainstream categories like swimwear portion and evening gown portion. With these content, beauty pageants gives out strong messages regarding what the ideal type of woman is, hence undermining the purpose of a beauty pageant: to empower women. Thus, although beauty pageants contribute to the entertainment of the masses, it promotes an ideal of female beauty that only a minority of women can realistically aspire, objectifies women, further advances cultural insensitivity among its candidates and uses up too much resources which is why it should be banned.
Child beauty pageants can be very damaging to a young girl from a psychological perspective. If the child does not win the contest, they are forced to believe they have faults, which do not make them perfect. Instead of teaching girls to appreciate their fault for making them unique from everyone else. Beauty pageants promote an atmosphere that it is wrong to not be perfect. Most grade school girls are not concerned with self-image, until someone, points out their ears may be too big or they suffer some other imperfection. A four year old should not be told she is not as attractive as another girl. Kids that age should be taught that every individual is unique and exceptional in his or her own style. Not that there is a perfect mode that we must survive to fit.
When entered into a beauty pageant there is a talent portion and swimwear/active wear categories, by having these portions of the contest we are teaching our girls to use their bodies to feel beautiful. A majority of the young girls who are doing the talent portion of the pageant will dance for their talent, these girls are taught to use their cute smiles and sometimes sexual movements to impress the judges to get a crown as representation of their beauty. Over the years a controversy of the swimwear portion of the contest has made an impact to the point where teen pageant competitions now have active wear instead of swimwear in a way to promote a healthy lifestyle that all the girls must have. Even with the switch to active wear girls are still being taught to idolize their bodies, “many of the young women with eating disorders were trained at an early age to value physical perfection, thinness, athletic prowess and attractiveness”. ( Cartwright, Child Beauty Pageants: What Are We Teaching Our Girls?) Another issue that Cartwright brings up about what we are teaching our girls is we are teaching young girls to strive for the wrong form of attention. These young girls are learning that the best kind of attention comes from the way you look. That the outward appearance is what matters, vs whats inside. Pageants also teach girls the wrong form of competitiveness, pageants are teaching them to compare themselves to the girl standing next to them and try to be more beautiful than they are. On the contrary some pageant parents will state that “competing in beauty contests is no different from playing a sport, which also requires time and money and puts intense pressure on young competitors…. like young athletes, little beauty queens learn discipline,and feel great pride in
Beauty pageants have long been a form of entertainment, exhibiting beautiful women with ideal bodies competing for their talent and looks. Many pageant moms involve their daughters in children’s pageants to help them improve their social skills, exercise their talents, and boost their self-esteem. Although the pageants may seem like harmless competition with benefits, research shows that they may be doing the young beauty queens more harm than good. “.the girls are receiving conflicting messages: In order to win, the girls must show a unique personality, but they must also act and dress in a hyper feminine manner and conform to the pageant world's ideal standard of beauty and narrow set of conventions.”
Cromie, William J. “The Whys and Woes of Beauty Pageants.” News.harvard.edu. 2000-2014. Web. 30 Apr. 2014.
Can anyone actually justify judging someone by their physical appearance? Although parents enjoy seeing their little girls in the spotlight all dolled up, most children don’t enjoy the pageant experience as much as the parents, and this vicarious living is dangerous, and the pageants have the capability of exploiting the children. Beauty pageants have a background of treating women disrespectfully and as if they are not equal. Women’s bodies are seen as objects of beauty as if we are just here to parade around for others. Today’s pageants are still set up in the same direction even for the youngest contests. They are dressed up to look like adults and sometimes dressed provocative. “Beauty pageants are a reflection of a culture in which women are not equal. Women’s bodies are not their own but are seen as objects of beauty for others.” (Nasso).