America’s Next Top Model

Beauty pageants have been around for a long time, making people believe that nothing could go wrong in such events. Nevertheless, when I consider women who glide across the stage, I recall skinny women, in specific, who appear to have unrealistic features such as: perfect teeth, skin, and bodies, putting pressure as only women who appear that way are in magazines, television, and movies. Subsequently, this begins when young women participate in beauty pageants. [ Dante Ultius] Society today thinks that entering young children in beauty pageants can help self esteem. Society believes it will make them feel beautiful, perfect, socially involved, discipline, self confidence, and so on. Well it turns out thatś the exact opposite of what they think. Putting children in beauty pageants at a young age can cause health issues like depression, low self of esteem, anxiety, eating disorder, and also the absense of a normal childhood. Research shows that over the past 10 years, there has been a 270% increase in the number of girls being hospitalized for eating disorders, some of these girls are as young as 7 years old [Kelly Kammer]. Competitions can display adult body dissatisfaction in their later years, and that it is also possible for them to suffer from various eating disorders [Psychologist Martina Cartwright].

Naturally, the lack in self confidence and esteem in these women has motivated doctors to new heights. Women want to be thin, so we will get them there. This is the mentality of

Since America’s Next Top Model gave a label to all the contestants in the show based on their race, ethnicity and cultural background, they were all expected act in a certain way. For instance, “because she always wants to feature another “black bitch” ── especially of the ratings-generating “ghetto” variety ── Banks brought Tiffany back for the fourth season, after she’d been through anger management classes.”(Pozner). Also “a black teenager thinks she’s hot until America’s Next Top Model’s judges convince her she’s an ugly ape,”(Pozner). Clearly, after participating in America’s Next Top Model, most its contestants were broken, taken apart and and sometimes put back together in a completely different way. Contestants on this show were treated more as an object rather than as a human being with morals, values and

Referencing from the same episode 3 of season 5, Isys's mum mention during the interview segment of the show, “I do take this pageant very seriously.” She also mention, “The stakes are really high at this pageant, because the prize money, the ten thousand dollars is like, I’ve never ever heard of that before.”

Tyra was one of the host on the T.V. Reality Show American’s Next Top Model. America's Next Top Model (abbreviated ANTM and Top Model) is an American reality television n series and interactive competition that premiered on May 20, 2003. It originally aired on UPN, whose merge with The WB created the in 2006. The program has aired 22 seasons ("cycles"), and each cycle sees a number of aspiring models compete for the title of "America's Next Top Model", providing them with an opportunity to begin their career in the

In the article “An Image To Heal”, it is stated, “I have known hundreds of women who feel justified in their starving, binging and purging, and excessive exercise--their attempts to drain themselves of fat and mold their bodies into the illusions of perfection that pour into their senses from every direction” (Zimmerman).

TLC’s American reality television show named Toddlers & Tiaras aired in 2009 with glamour, glitz and drama. This show documents the life of young girls and their mothers dramatically preparing for glamour pageants across America. Involving girls being tightened into millionaire rhinestone dresses, spray tanned, forced into fake teeth, hair, eyelashes and nails by demanding mothers. In addition, learning how to strut, pout, smile, wave and look the prettiest to please the panel of judges. All of this resulting in mountains of cash, glistening tiaras, sashes and most importantly the honour of

Throughout time, beauty pageants is the main topic that society have been disputing about. On camera the children are wearing their pretty dresses and a big smile on their face to look cute and in the end to hopefully get 1st place, on the contrary, off camera there’s a lot of stress taken to the child by their parent as well with problems with the child’s stamina, therefore the little girls would have to grow up faster than those who aren’t in beauty pageants.

Critics of the show say that many parents are living their own fantasies through their children and those child beauty pageants can destroy self-esteem. They insist the pageants send warped messages to little girls that looking pretty and pleasing other people are most important. There is certainly no evidence that these toddler beauty pageants create anything but future women who are so self-absorbed that they will not know how to get a long in the world. This is because once the pageants are over, the little girl is no longer a tot with a tiara, yet expects the world to treat her like a queen.

The models are all expected to be the showstoppers, in lay mans terms, the most beautiful. This creates a certain competition amongst the models, this competition makes the models eat, sleep, and act differently then they usually would. According to 2009 Victoria’s secret angel winner Kylie Bisutti “One of my roommates was so bulimic she would involuntarily throw up when she ate. She would go to sleep crying every night and just look at herself in the mirror thinking that she was so fat. And she was so thin.” Because beauty is now defined by weight along with ones perceived facial attractiveness the models will starve themselves just to be the thinnest, which would equal being pretty. The models will change even the smallest things about themselves and their habits to ensure their place in people’s minds, which would make them popular amongst the crowd, which would allow them the opportunity to be awarded the title Angel. The award is given to the prettiest girl which is most likely to be the thinnest and attractive girl, society is changing the way people see “Beauty” this also makes model change their appearances physically through

Beauty pageants became popular in The United States around the 1920’s. They originated to serve as a marketing tool. Women were formally displayed like trophies because of their sexual appeal however; children were taken a step further. In “Child Beauty Pageants”, Hilary Levey Friedman points out, “Instead of a typical runway walk, child pageant modeling is a set routine, choreographed with facial expressions and spins. At many pageants a “grand supreme” title is decided based on the highest score for the entire event or for an age group, such as zero to six.” The popularity only increased over the years as it spread across the nation. Media jumped over the chance to endorse them and the fad only spiked.

After the tragic unsolved murder of 5-year old beauty pageant girl JonBenet Ramsey, many people were appalled with what they saw after looking into the industry. People could not believe that six year olds were parading around on stage in a full face of makeup (Hollandsworth). However, with the rise of shows like TLC’s “Toddlers and Tiaras,” child beauty pageants have become a much more desensitized subject. The general format of the show is always the same. Following two or three young girls, almost always white, anywhere between the ages of two to nine years, “not only giving out the names of these children, but they also tell you what towns these little girls live in” (hollandsworth). The show captures what goes into

Look in the mirror. Think of what it would be like to be twenty to thirty pounds thinner. Think of all the negative comments people have to say. Suck in, stand tall, back up, move forward, cry. This is the routine many women in the United States go through daily.

The model’s face, hair, body shape, dress, and just their overall physical appearance can cause the viewer to have a positive opinion about the model in just a short amount of seconds of just viewing the image. When teens view a model on TV, or in a magazine all they think about is looking “like a supermodel: perfectly thin, tall, sculpted, and commanding,” which is “our cultural epitome of feminine success” (Zimmerman p 2). With this, american society plays a role in determining whether it is acceptable for a woman to look “thicker”, or better yet to look like a beautiful more common woman that is “thin”. We tend to follow what other people want to see rather than listen to our own self which is why models and advertisements have taken control over the minds of many teen girls. In “The Skinny on Models,” the writer brought to the attention that a Brazilian fashion model named Ana Caroline, who showed creations of a famous designer, Giorgio Armani, dies due to the eating disorders, she had because of the ultra thin body images the fashion industry was promoting, bringing the attention of banning skinny models (“The Skinny on Models”). Furthermore, many models portray to be “the perfect” girl, which in many cases leads for teen girls to be turned into someone they wish to be because of the view that models have given to the world. For example, fashion runways and contests have given us a perspective of what many people look for because the such model has won the “Ms. Universe” title. With the idea of body image, insecurities start to develop in the mind of a teen girls, creating low-self esteem. Teenagers are in a stage of life where all they care about is acceptence towards a group of people and media creates and ideal image of what one should look like. Model’s weaken a girl’s self esteem by

Women go to extremes to try to change themselves to have what society visualizes as “the perfect body.” They try changing everything about themselves to try to be accepted. This leads to eating disorders and young woman getting sick, sometimes