The traditional beauty pageant originated almost 100 years ago in the 1920's and has transformed into a phenomena for young women, and now children, throughout the United States. When I think of a beauty pageant, I envision fake hair, fake nails, fake everything. Over time, the evolving role of beauty pageants has shaped children, young women and yes, men, as they devote their lives to become the best. Some critics believe that this process is too exploitative, and their reasons why can be summed up in three words: Toddlers and Tiaras.
Not only are beauty pageants outrageously expensive, but they can also do more harm than simply damaging your wallet. There is peer pressure, parental pressure and lastly the pressure of the competitiveness. Ever since the Jon Benet Ramsey murder in 1996, an image has been placed on child beauty pageants because of the terrifying effects that come from exploiting our youth.
Check out this scary quote from Dr. Nancy Irwin to see what professional's are saying about the consequences of making our children famous at a young age.
Toddlers and Tiaras may be giving parents the wrong impression of what beauty pageants are meant to demonstrate. Some believe that it's the parents themselves who are selfish and that they are spoiling their children and training them that their value is based on beauty.
Uniquely, many pageant-pushing parents seem to be from lower income families, because they want their children to learn the skills needed to move up the social scale. Some parents push their kids into pageants in the hopes of a better mother/daughter bond. Others want their children with birth defects to participate in pageants to make them feel more socially acceptable.
Eight-year-old Britney Campbell is an active pageant participant who was recently taken away from her mother, Kerry, because she was injecting Britney with Botox and also performing "virginal" waxing to her young daughter. Needless to say, Children's Protective Services took Britney out of Kerry's possession. This is just one instance which demonstrates the extreme to which parents are going to in order to make their children, key word, children, beautiful.
The opposing argument is valid as well, and relates back to the original purpose of beauty pageants.
Young women and children are receiving more and more cash prizes and scholarships through competitions, which is almost like a job for some of these girls. Pageants were created for political, educational and entertaining purposes, which gives the contestants a sense of achievement at the end of the day.
Read this from Annette Hill, the founder of Universal Royalty Child and Baby Beauty Pageants, to find other positive outcomes of the pageantry world.
"People often say that 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder,' and I say that the most liberating thing about beauty is realizing that you are the beholder. This empowers us to find beauty in places where others have dared not to look, including inside ourselves." -Salma Hayek
