Beauty Pageants and Our Children Essay

Alost 3 million barbarianren, almost of them girls, from the ages of 6 months and 17 years grapple in debaucher boastings annuall(a)y in America. Competition can be topical anaesthetic and national and they compete in categories much(prenominal) as swimwear, talent, costume of your choice, and eveningwear. This is an industry where bring forths arrive at her daughter capacity drinks for a throw out before showrys, 3-year-olds don bastard fingernails, and p bents on a regular basis spend five thousand dollars on a pip-squeaks ostentation outfit (ONeill 1). Beauty vaunts have forbid consequences on Americas jejuneness objectors through the drag to be perfect, media influences, and chela sexualization, which results in exhaustion, eating dis fixs, and dead body flick issues in their future.In recent years, the tyke strike pageant industry has expvirtuosontially gr accept in size and popularity. This emergence is mainly due to television exposes, such(prenomi nal)(prenominal) as Toddlers & Tiaras and Here Comes H acey wench tinkers dam that may be socialize but exploit little girls in the process. These reality shows expose the piece of ass-the-scenes abuses of mantrap pageants that most people were oblivious overly before. These shows have also revealed the use of energy supplements to improve the contestants per arrive atance, age-inappropriate costumes, intense and painful strike regimens.Alana Thompson, featured on TLCs Toddlers & Tiaras, is a seven-year-old beauty queen, nicknamed H unrivaledy Boo Boo, whose mother frequently gives her the infamous Go-Go juice, a mix of personnel casualty red cent and Mountain Dew, before pageants. It is frequent familiarity that energy drinks atomic number 18 bad for ones wellness, but ein truth nutritionist in the world would agree that Red Bull for a seven-year-old is awfully dangerous. Alana standardised a shot has her own reality television show Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.Parent s are non only harming their squirtrens health but also their moral. On one Toddlers & Tiaras episode, Paisley, merely 3-years-old, sported a costume establish on the prostitute in sanely Woman. In a 2011 episode, Madiysyn Mady Versts mother filled out the then-4-year-olds government agency with fake breasts and an impossibly round behind for a Dolly Parton routine. Experts in peasant development surround the difference among playing dress-up and making a work out of it. Little girls are sibyllic to play with dolls, not be dolls, says object Sichel, a New York-based licensed clinical social worker, who calls the extreme grooming common at pageants a form of peasant abuse. Playing dress-up is normal and healthy, but when its demanded, it leaves the churl not knowing what they want, he says. Accentuating their appearance with such accoutrements as fake hair, teeth, spray tans and breast padding causes the children tremendous confusion, wondering why they are not okay witho ut those things (Triggs 1).All of this confusion and body see problems is instilled in child beauty pageant contestants at a very(prenominal) girlish age. Ultimately, this leads to eating disorders, psychological issues, and affinity problems in the contestants later years. A deliberate conducted at the University of Minnesota by Anna Wonderlich, Diann Ackard, and Judith Henderson showed the coefficient of correlation amidst childhood beauty pageants and expectant disordered eating, body dissatisfaction, depression, and self-esteem (Wonderlich 1). The results of this scientific experiment proved that for all the tests that assessed characteristics of anorexia and bulimia nervosa scores for those who had participated in beauty pageants were high than scores for those who had not participated (Wonderlich 5).These results indicate a residenceificant association between childhood beauty pageant participation and change magnitude body dissatisfaction, difficulty trusting so cial relationships, and greater impulsive deportments, and indicate a trend toward increased feelings of ineffectiveness (Wonderlich 6). other example of the destructive effect of childhood beauty pageant is Brooke Breedwell, now nineteen, who was a child pageant contestant and a star of the television documentary, Painted Babies. As a girl, Breedwell suffered from stress and anxiety darn striving for an unrealistic standard of ne plus ultra. In mixed interviews, she explains that her mothers ambition, coupled with her own obsessive drive to win, resulted in pure(a) social and psychological consequences (Ahrens 86).Another banish consequence of childhood beauty pageants is the lamentable sexualization of teenage girls that steals away their treasured honoras if eating disorders and body come across problems were not enough. Former child beauty queen Nicole Hunter confirms this theory by explaining that dressing and acting like a woman at a new(a) age compelled her to prem aturely confront her sexuality, which in turn lowered her self-esteem (Liberman 741). The child pageant circuit concentrates on the ideals of perfection and beauty, with an accomp some(prenominal)ing focus on sexuality. bare girls dressed in skimpy costumes order and dance, remove pieces of their outfits and wink at judges. Basically, young beauty queens are taught to take on and manipulate their early sexuality in order to win.Though frequently condemned for such eccentric and damaging practices, the child pageant industry has been gaining success and extensive popularity (Liberman 745). Additionally, reporter Richard Goldstein investigated the JonBenet Ramsey, a child beauty queen, mutilate case and brought to the surface both our horror at how effectively a child can be constructed as a sexual being and our guilt at the please we take in such a sight (Giroux 50). Her dynamic parting in pageants was vastly examined by media aft(prenominal) the murder. After JonBenets highly air murder, the problems of child beauty pageants, especially the debasement of young girls, are first brought to inns attention.Although many pageant upraises argue that the press unfairly focused on the connection of beauty pageants to Jon Benets murder, these defenders seldom address the concerns of robbing a child of her fair play by depicting young girls as sexualized nymphets. They have little to say close what adolescents actually gain in pageants. Those in favor of the pageants overlook how a child might see herself and her ability to form relationships with society when her feelings of self-worth is defined solely through a belief that beauty is elongate and patronizing (Giroux 54-55).No five-year-old child enjoys acquiring her hair ripped out and teased, spending hours individually day practicing exhausting dance routines, or devoting every weekend traveling to pageants alternatively than playing with friends. It is the beauty pageant contestants mother who forces them to endure these toilsome and some prison terms painful rituals in order to achieve their own satisfaction. When feminist writer-performer, StaceyAnn get up first saw Toddlers & Tiaras she was flabbergasted by the parents who were so invested in these contests they got angry if their girls showed any signs of flagging. In regards to the infamous pageant moms, chin states that, the pageant reminded me a little of traverse showstiny, powerless competitors trained to do as they are told, with trainers who exploit their charges to gain fame and risk and live out some obsolescent dream they once had for themselves (Chin 1).The vast bulk of pageant moms deny the harmful effects beauty pageants have own their child. show mothers often neutralize their deviant behavior of enrolling their daughter in pageants by claiming pageants armed service their daughter rather than hurt. Also, mothers deny their own responsibility as the accountable parent by claiming that her daughter choo ses to participate in beauty pageants (Pannell 68). Every single pageant mom asked in a matter well-nigh childhood beauty pageants talked about competitors winning prize money, crowns, trophies and gifts in child beauty pageants (Mosel-Talavera 81).Some mothers deceptively sign their children up for pageants to exploit their daughters financially. One pageant mother says that there is a very infamous pageant child that forever wins a large sum of money, on that point is one little girl rout South shes the daughter of one of the biggest known photographers. In six weeks time she went from pageant to pageant and won like $40,000. In the summer of 2005, there was some other child, whose mother also owns a pageant business, who won three cars at pageants (Levey 204-205). These examples clearly reveal the evils of parents exploiting their children in pageants for their own self-seeking rewards.In childhood beauty pageants, the pressure from parents, influence from the media, and the desire to win all lead to disastrous consequences for the participants, which will prevail with them for the rest of their life. Eating disorders, body image issues, and an early loss of innocence are just a few of the consequences these preciously girls will have to deal with in their lifetime. No child should have to shinny with these problems at such a young age. Although little girls dressed up in frilly dresses and tiaras may be cute, there is a fine line between a fun beauty pageant and ruining a young girls life.