What Are The Negative Effects Of Child 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].

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,

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

Starting at only two years of age, contestants of these child beauty pageants are being over sexualized. They are oftentimes made to wear tight and revealing dresses, to flaunt something they have not yet developed. Spray tans, hair extensions, fake nails and eyelashes, “sexy” outfits and bathing suits. These girls are even sometimes made to wear fake teeth, because what used to be “innocent and adorable” about the gaps in a child’s teeth from losing them, is no longer pretty enough in the eyes of the judge. In July 2012, Knox College in Galesburg, III. conducted an experiment on girls ages 6 to 9. In the experiment they showed the girls two different dolls, one was dressed in tight and revealing clothing while the other was dressed in a modest but popular looking outfit. The researchers asked the girls which

In “Beauty Pageants Draw Children and Criticism” by Kristen Schultz and Pleshette Murphy, it discusses how girls from infants to 16 years old enter beauty pageants and those who support beauty pageants would say this is a great way for girls to play like cinderella but they don’t realize

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.

'Most people love you for who you pretend to be. To keep their love you keep pretending, performing. You get to love your pretence. Its true we're locked in an image, an act' a quote from the lead singer of The Doors, Jim Morrison (Cartwright). Pageantry has been around for 95 years. Starting in the 1920's in an Atlantic City hotel, originally for adults, pageants have slowly become more popular for children in the past 40 years (Nussbaum). Over the years child pageants have grown more and more, with the hit TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras people are able to have a firsthand look at what really goes into the pageantry behind the scenes. Many people believe that pageants give the contestants confidence and self-esteem (Williams). Does pageantry really have any

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.

(Andrea Canning & Jennifer Pierera) Let us not forget the fake eyelashes, nails, makeup, teeth whitening and hair extensions; put it all together and you have got a beauty queen. Does being beautiful mean you have to be sexy and promiscuous? The talent portion of the pageant consists of the children dancing sexually, winking, posing and blowing kisses to the judges. This kind of activity pressures little girls to be flirtatious and engage in sexual actives at a young age. Today’s pageants force children to do everything an adult would do and wear, ultimately leading them to believe they are mature enough to behave and engage in the same activities as adults do.

There is nothing wrong with little girls wearing cute pink dresses and walking down a stage to perform a few adorable stunts or tricks. However, there is everything wrong when these actions could potentially lead to long term damages in young girls. And therein lies the problem with child beauty pageants, they have the potential to create long term issues for the many of the female children who are asked to participate in them. This is the stance that “Toddlers and Tiaras” takes regarding the issue of child beauty pageants; the author of the article, Skip Hollandsworth, asserts that “many psychologists believe that developmental and emotional problems can stem from pressure and value system that pageants embody” (493). Hollandsworth in her