When it comes to beauty pageants there are many different sides. Good sides, bad sides, and even the ‘I wish I were pretty enough to be a pageant girl’ sides. But when it comes to child pageants, a.k.a. flaunting around little kids dressed in bikinis on a stage in front of judges, there really aren’t many good sides at all.
Sometimes, pageant children, of all ages, learn lessons from pageants that could help them later. Author and retired pageant queen Jennifer Trujillo writes that the children can learn “many valuable lessons.” And that “Learning to be articulate, to be confident, and developing a thick skin” can help them out later in life (Trujjilo). What they leave out is the fact that sometimes, the children lose, if that happens, they just might LOSE self-esteem, and as writer Helen Malmsio says, “take it personally”. They feel like they are ugly and unattractive, and as though nobody will like them because they aren't perfect.
It also takes a lot of time to get ready for a pageant, and although pageants can teach children how to talk and act with others, they have to spend time and money practicing their dances and twirls, and smiles, and even their flirting, causing them to be inside doing their routines instead of being outside and playing with friends or going and hanging out with peers.
Pageants may also put the children in danger. Many children that lose self esteem when it comes to how they look can get eating disorders such as anorexia because they don’t think they will ever be good enough (Reed). Trujillo
But it’s hard to ignore the fact of just how many pageants there are and how many people are in them every day. Not only are they in almost every state, but these days they are also on TV! Many, many people have watched TLC’s Toddlers in Tiaras and it’s pretty clear that they target the worst children there. The brats that are mean, rude, and bossy. Now although this can be far from reality, and sometimes they challenge the children to do their best, many children, mostly pageant children, DO boss their parents around just like on the hit show (Day).
This would most likely be because of the fact that the parents let them.
Most children love having the spotlight on them, they like the feeling of being told they did wonderful and they are pretty. They become adapted to the spoiled life of a star, and they won’t have it any other way, even if it means bossing their own mother around. The parents themselves can sometimes be the greatest problem, they don’t want their precious little angels to drop out of winning them money, so the parents let their children boss them around, as long as the pageants continue. This put together can cause bossy, arrogant children.
But perhaps the worst lesson the children can learn is that what matters is what’s on the outside. They think that the only way to get through life is to look good. It can get to the point of losing everything just to look acceptable, or at least their version of acceptable, having a negative effect on their life. When children apply for jobs, it might help to look fashionable and trendy, but unless their applying for a job at McDonalds, the boss will probably also look for more things, such as personality, and spirit, and brains. Of course, after being told all her life that beauty is the key to life, the children might not have thought that those things mattered.
Pageants can be fun, if the children want to and if not taken too far, but if they are, they can ruin the life of the children. Because those children will grow up to be tomorrow’s adults, NOT a couple Barbie’s on a shelf. Many just need to remember that.
Work Sited
Day, Elizabeth. “Living dolls: Inside the world of child beauty pageants”.
www.Guardian.co.uk web. Feb 14, 2012.
Malmsio, Helen. “Child Beauty Pageants pros and cons”. www.squidoo.com web. Feb 9, 2012.
Reed, Billy. Child beauty pageants should be eliminated. Detroit
Trujillo, Jennifer. Teen beauty pageants teach teens many valuable life lessons. Detroit
