Beauty Pageants

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].

Participating in glitzy beauty pageants has an extreme financial demand on the parents as most of them are middle working class citizens. Parent go above and beyond as they spend money on resources such as high-glitz coaches and photographers. Author Orenstein claims “some families spend $75,000 a year on pageant” and he believes “they could take their daughters around the world, and these little girls would get a lot more out of it than they would dressing up and parading across the stage” (Hollandsworth 497). The opinion of Orenstein shows how little girls could be opened up to broader horizons of the world instead of the closed mind set of beauty and glitz. A study conducted in 2005 published in Eating Disorders: The Journal of Treatment & Prevention showed how those who participated in beauty pageants “scored significantly higher on body dissatisfaction, interpersonal distrust and impulse dysregulation [an inability to resist performing actions that would be harmful to themselves or others]”.

Activities similarly to beauty pageants that focus on physical appearance can have detrimental effect on young children’s self-esteem, health and mental issues in their life. Martha M. Cartwright, a professor of nutritional sciences said, “ That it’s not uncommon for teens who used to be in pageants to develop eating disorders and have body image problems”. Eating disorder or Anorexia is increasing

Child beauty pageants may seem like harmless fun, but the actual effects it has on adolescents is not worth the public adoration. Some people believe that pageants do not have long lasting effects on them, and that, for children, pageants just give them the opportunity to play dress up. Even though children may not be affected immediately, the values that pageants instill are buried in their subconscious. By judging children at such young ages based solely off outward appearance, they grow up with a distorted psyche, which later affects them in their adult life. Since the media provides children with unrealistic standards of appearance, and pageants teach them that attractiveness is the key to success, many downsides follow, including poor

Each year, around three million children, ages 6 to 16, will compete in a beauty pageant. When a child enters to compete in a beauty pageant, it not only damages the child now, but as well as later in life. Also, the standards that these children are held to while competing in a beauty pageant is affecting their development.

Imagining if one day you saw your five year old daughter with a full face of makeup and high heels. Now she looks like a miniature adult. Not only is she a miniature adult, but now she also is very self conscious of herself and has an eating disorder at five years old. Child beauty pageants have some pros and a of lot cons to them. Also, they can affect a child’s development. One should consider that child beauty pageants can lead to a lot of mental health issues for kids at a very young age.

Beauty pageants are an unnecessary entertainment of society because they set unrealistic beauty standards for an audience of easily influenced young women. In the world of beauty pageants, there is only one kind of beauty. This one kind of beauty is "Barbie": tall, long-legged, tiny waist, straight white teeth, long thick hair. These beauty pageants can be misleading and harmful, not only to women without this body type, but also to society as a whole. The standard that beauty pageants strive for is not an all-encompassing idea of beauty, but one that is shallow and looks only at a woman's physical appearance. In a study released in September 2013, 131 female beauty pageant contestants from 43 states completed an anonymous study. 26% reported that they had been told or perceived they had an eating disorder, 48.5% reported wanting to be thinner and 57% were trying to lose weight. Beauty pageant organizers have striven for years to ensure that contestants have an opportunity to show their skills before they are crowned a "beauty queen", but the reality is that a woman not fitting the unrealistic ‘Barbie’ physical standards of beauty competition would never be considered to win a competition.

Zinzi Williams explains the downsides of pageantry in “Do Pageant Children Behave Differently than Other Kids?” The central claim is that there are many psychological differences between children who compete in the world of pageantry and children who don’t. Williams states the minor claims that children who compete in beauty pageants put beauty ahead of schoolwork and play time. Her other minor claim is that beauty contests affect the way the children who compete view their bodies and there overall appearance. She states that statistic that if there are 20 girls competing in the pageant, that each contestant only has a 5% chance of winning, which is very slim! Williams explains that in her research she found that on WebMD, a medical website,

Self-esteem and body-image problems makes someone feel like they’re not good enough and it's something a toddler shouldn't have to deal with. Girls struggling with self-esteem can also deal with things such as eating disorders, depression, and physical harm. Beauty pageants mainly focus on appearance which easily causes self-worth issues because the contestants are comparing themselves to the other girls in their age group. " This longing for perfection leads to long-term side-impacts, causing superficiality, destroying self-worth and self-beauty, and causing girls to think that natural-beauty will never be enough" (Lindsey).

The most important factor of these pageants, beauty. When competing in and watching beauty pageants at a young age, girls believe that their outer beauty matters most. Girls who watch Toddlers and Tiaras focus on the contestant’s beauty, causing them to do the same with themselves. The skinny girls hidden under piles of makeup on tv make both the contestant and viewer think that this is normal. Before a pageant, a mom injected botox in her 8 year old daughter’s face to take away her wrinkles. Another mom fed her daughter tapeworms to make her skinnier. Soon after, the girl was in the hospital. In no situation should little girls have to go through this just to improve their outer appearance. If this is what it takes for a girl to win, then we are better off without these pageants.

1. There are about 250,000 children in child beauty pageants all throughout the United States. As many people know, child beauty pageants consist of children dressing up in revealing dresses, tons of makeup, and fake hair. Many of these kids grow up to have struggles with perfection, dieting, eating disorders and their body image. These kids need to learn that beauty isn't just what’s on the outside and that there’s a lot more in life than the need to always look perfect.

In modern day society, people often tune into TLC’s hit show Toddlers in Tiaras. Most see it as a harmless pastime for the children, but child beauty pageants are far from harmless. In recent years, child beauty pageants have become increasingly popular all over the U.S, making it a 5 billion dollar industry. Almost 5,000 pageants are held with 250,000 children participating with the majority of the contestants under the age of twelve (“Child beauty Pageants”). Unfortunately, what most viewers do not realize is that many contestants will suffer from sexual abuse and eating disorders by the time they are teenagers. With that being said, beauty pageants have a negative impact on female adolescents.

The world is a beautiful thing but society has corrupted it to the point only perfection can be appealing. Pageants display what society finds attractive. Contests held like this are only toxic for young minds because they only influence their views of beauty. Media has evolved this into the competitive game that’s seen today. Parents should stop participating their children in beauty pageants because they cause psychological problems, unrealistic standards, and social prejudice.

“Mommy I am tired, and I don’t want to perform,” a young girl pleads as her mother urges her to go up on stage. At the tender age of four, children are not independent enough to make their own decisions, and many parents take advantage of this by forcing their young kids to compete in pageants. Money prizes, trophies, and praise overcome the better judgement of many parents who continuously spend thousands of dollars on glitz and glam for their children. Childhood beauty pageants are continuously on the rise due to reality shows that follow pageant children and their families. Many parents seem to find nothing wrong with having their children compete in them, but beauty pageants are not great activities for young kids to partake in. Childhood beauty pageants should be banned because they sexualize young children, force children to use artificial means to gain self-esteem, and can lead to long term psychological effects.

Everyday across the country thousands of children are dress up to compete in pageants based on who is the cutest. The children are judged on their personalities, goals, and outfits. This does not seem so bad at first glance and really it is not. The problem starts when children are put in make up padded bras high heels and swim suits then sent down a catwalk with hundreds of people looking at them. This is where child beauty pageants cross the line.