Personal Narrative: Miss Alaska's Outstanding Teen Pageant

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].

It was a sunny day around 3:00 P.M. and we had just checked the mail, I received a letter stating that I had been chosen to participate in the 2015 Miss Teen Little Rock Pageant for a chance to receive a chance at a 30,000 scholarship, and if I won I would compete in Nationals in Orlando Florida. I was excited about the opportunity and was going to give it a shot even though I had always said, “I will never be in a pageant even if I was offered,” but I knew I would need the scholarship for college. The first meeting came around and we didn’t have the gas to go so I called the main office and they filled my in on what exactly I needed to do. I started filling out the paper work and went door to door and to businesses’ receiving sponsors I was

In the world of beauty pageants, many people find themselves entrapped in the expensiveness of the gown, the extravagance of the hairstyle, and how attractive the woman sporting all of this truly is. However, when entered into this arena at a young age, one where you are not fully developed and deep in adolescence, this presents a problem not all are aware of. Many people don’t understand the emotional stress that almost everyone that participates in pageants goes through. Women face various issues after everything has been said and done. A number of pageant contestants start at a relatively young age, some as young as infants, and grow up in this seemingly glamorous world of pageantry, from which they learn to present themselves in a

To be honest, participating in a beauty pageant was never where I would have pictured myself, but when my step-sister's best friend needed to recruit 10 potential delegates in order to compete internationally & friends & family learned I was recruited they displayed

Despite the shocked, concerned, and altogether flabbergasted look on my friends’ faces when I told them I would enter in my first pageant at fifteen years old, I stuck to my plan and competed amongst the most experienced, poised, and articulate pageant veterans in a statewide event. Even my closest friends could not understand why a shy, quiet girl like me would suddenly want to perform for hundreds of people, and honestly, this whim surprised myself as well. Whether a subdued dream from my childhood of becoming a beloved Miss America reemerged or I simply wanted to prove my confidence to my worried mom, I still do not know; nevertheless, I mustered up enough courage to conduct interviews, deliver an onstage introduction, and showcase poise

Adolescents that take part in beauty pageants when they are young are facing difficult psychological problems such as, sexulaizing at a young age, low self esteem, and body image issues. Recent surveys show that the number one wish for 11-17 year old girls is to be thinner (Morgan). When kids engage in beauty contests, they are no longer supposed to look cute, rather they are supposed to be attractive. They wear revealing clothes, loads of makeup, and fake teeth and hair.

Breathe. Your name has to be coming up soon. You made it last year. Oh, no, the tenth name. I don’t believe it. I feel sick. These are just excerpts of the thoughts racing through my mind as I stood amongt 27 other girls during the announcement of the Top Eleven finalists at the 2015 Miss Pennsylvania’s Outstanding Teen Pageant. It was my second year competing, and I had made the Top Eleven cut the year before. I never expected NOT to make it the following year. Admittedly, I was expecting to make the Top Five! Instead, I watched the rest of the competition from the audience in devastation. I was not accustomed to failure, and losing hit me hard.

world of beauty pageant. They will compete in hopes of getting the crown, pageant titles, trophies, fame and of course money. In an article called ‘Princess by Proxy: What Child Beauty Pageants Teach Girls About Self-Worth and What We Can Do About It,’ M.Cartwright (2012) argues that

It was a warm summer day for Marcus but he was having a bad day, he had the worst little sister Makena. Who always got what she wanted, was unbelievably good at lying, had won 10 beauty pageants, and was mean around him but when mom and dad were around, she acted like a saint. She spray painted his toy cars hot pink and glued macaroni to them and ate his breakfast as well as her´s in the morning. And even covered him in glue and purple glitter while mom and dad were on a date and the one that made him super angry was she put makeup on him in his sleep while mom and dad were asleep on the first day of school. And one day he was fed up with it and decided to get revenge on his sister. It was 1 day until her little miss cutie pie beauty pageant

One would believe that a life of glamorous hair and make-up, beautiful gowns, and sparkling tiaras would be every young girls dream, unfortunately, for many, this dream often turns into a nightmare. For nearly fifty  years children have been subjected to the world of beauty pageants where they have been forced to behave as young adults rather than the five year olds that they actually are. Young children spend numerous hours every day practicing speeches and model walks for upcoming pageants rather than focusing on schoolwork and playing with friends. With an emphasis placed on appearance in beauty contests, children become devastatingly concerned with the way that they look before many of them can walk. The lifestyle of child beauty

Beauty pageants have been apart of the American community for many years. They are a competition where people, young and old, go to show off their talents, costumes, and of course their beauty. While this may seem somewhat accepted for older men and women, what happens when you throw children in the same competitions? Children beauty pageants have been growing at an alarming rate. Popular television shows, like Toddlers and Tiaras, are perpetuating the idea of theses ‘shallow’ competitions. While not all children are forced to do this pageants, many are. This can damage young kids and have a major impact on their adult life. Young children beauty pageants are detrimental to participants’ psychological health, harm family relations and disrupt the natural course of childhood, and encourage a demeaning view of women.

A scantily clad four-year-old girl struts across the stage, her perfectly white teeth gleaming as she flashes them at the judges. Her long, blonde, flawlessly curled hair bounces behind her as she strikes a sassy pose. Her candy apple, red nails catch the light. This is just one of many girls that will participate in this particular beauty pageant, each looking like a mid-twenties girl on a night out shrunk down to a perfect mini me. Through these pageants, girls are taught that outward appearance is of primary importance and they must stick to a strict routine to accomplish this. If they fail to live up to these expectations, they can face disappointment and guilt. Most also learn that sexuality is their currency, which must be traded and exploited to get anywhere in life.

Beauty pageants can be organized to advance some good causes. The contests are also a form of entertainment similarly to movies and music. For many models, the shows offer an opportunity for exposure and possible endorsements of brands or scholarships for winners of the pageants (Wolf, 2013).For years, women have been subjected to contests that seek to identify the most beautiful amongst them. Like cattle being taken to a slaughterhouse, women are paraded and subjected to a rigorous exercise of identifying the fairest of them all. The losers sometimes leave the contests feeling disgruntled and unappreciated with their self-esteem in tatters (Wolf, 2013).In addition to the psychological torture, they experience women in beauty pageants also expose themselves to dangerous beauty products and

Beauty can be portrayed in a variety of means, whether it is internal or of superficial appearance. Particularly, beauty pageants revolve around a physical representation, expecting masked facial features and thin bodies that delineate a synthetic facade, as opposed to naturality. With over 3000 beauty competitions a year and approximately 2.5 million participants in the United States alone, pageants are not foreign to the American culture (DeNinno). In a modern, egalitarian society, beauty pageants should be banned, as they provoke mental and dietary issues, promote false conceptions of feminine beauty, and adversely influence self worth, particularly in young contestants.

Rebecca Reid, author of “Beauty pageants are sexist and outdated and need to stop” disagrees with the world of pageants. She shows how her own story puts the image of pageants in her head. Before she felt pretty she didn’t want to participate in a pageant because she was afraid of someone telling her she was not good enough. She read where the representative of the UK had to lose weight to compete in the Miss United Continents. She