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In 1997 images of a beautiful six-year old beauty queen flashed across the T. V screens in homes across the U. S. and around the world. Who had murdered Jon Benet Ramsey? No one knows.
The case brought all eyes to the attention of child beauty pageants. Videos and pictures of Jon Benet were literally on every news-program and in every newspaper and magazine. The world of beauty pageants had been exposed. The world of child beauty pageants that to an outsider- seemed to tread a fine line verging into pornography (Branson). The sights of these little girls imitating adult beauty queens in pictures are shocking.
Pageant children are seen as having been deprived of their childhood by being taught sexually provocative behavior while performing on stage. Children as young as one month old were parading or being paraded around with pounds of make-up on and over-extravagant dresses, decked out in sequins and pearls. They sing songs such as America the Beautiful, dance and strut what stuff they do have, or throw a baton in the air a couple of times. But, rarely do these pageants have anything to do with talent; to win, children have to be physically attractive. What kind of a message is this sending to the kids? This sends the wrong kind of message that a cute smile and nice hair are everything (Briggs A- 4).
Is it right that parents are allowing their children to do this, posing as 18 -year olds rather than the eight year olds they really are? Children should be allowed to live their own lives as carefree kids rather than trying to keep up with the pressures of impressing others and their own parents. Most pageants occur on the weekends and, when a girl is constantly competing, she may spend her whole weekend on the road in a car or mini-van. Hopping from one town to the next, hoping to claim a small prize.
The weekends are a time for kids to relax and enjoy spending time to themselves and little playmates either running around in the yard, hanging off the jungle gym or playing house, like the other kids their age. Jonbenet's murder caught the attention of the publics eye when it forced them to take a closer look at what our society holds as what is right and moral today. The death of the child beauty queen raised serious questions about the things that influence childrens lives. The parents are concerned with winning the prizes: They show no interest when it comes to possible negative effects of dressing their children up in provocative clothing, capping their teeth, putting fake eyelashes on them, and having them perform before audiences in a manner that suggests a sexuality well beyond their years (Giroux 1). Its not healthy for a young child to be constantly on parade. It is more often than not that a child will act in a manner more mature than other children their age because, that is the way they have been taught, to impress adults.
They do not know how to turn the adult mature level off; they do not know how to live life like a carefree child. Instead of napping, playing, and learning from the warm environment of home and family, these thrust into the spotlight by ego-driven parents (Solomon). By participating in these pageants at an early age, a child will not have the opportunity to experience the norms of becoming a pre-teen, such as putting make-up on for the first time. Neither will she get to experience the joy of putting on her first Cinderella dress for her high schools homecoming. Child Psychiatrist Dell says, You lose the opportunity to have that innocence. A five-year old cant say, Ten years down the road I wont have anything to look forward to (Bernstein).
Children start parading the stages, beginning their pageant careers, before many of them can even walk. Show Biz USA offers baby pageants for infants 1 month old to kids just under four years (Briggs A- 4). How can a child truly experience growing up as a little kid, when he or she constantly has to practice their smile, their walk and their talk? A first memory for a normal child maybe their first birthday party, their first bike or their first little playmate. Then you have the kid that competes in pageants every weekend, their earliest memories are ones of being judged by strangers and gawked over by on-lookers, or being spanked by their mother for not performing as well as they should have. The whole pageant industry started around 15 -years ago when many of the pageant gurus realized they could draw in more money by holding more pageants geared towards younger children, and their parents.
Hundreds of these child beauty pageants are held each year throughout the U. S; in Houston, Texas, theres at least one such pageant going on in the area almost every weekend (Pugh 1). With a pageant every weekend going on you have the parents who go to every single one of them, spending hundreds, even thousands, on entry fees, food, transportation and lodging, all for the sake of a small prize, if the child does their job and wins. With an estimated three million children and young adults participating in these pageants, half of them are under the age of twelve. Children who enter in pageants tend to come from working class families with fantasies and the hopes of winning a small cash prize. Most of these local pageants have entry fees ranging from twenty dollars to one hundred and fifty dollars.
Middle and upper class families attend the larger and more expensive pageants, able to spend a great deal of money on voice and dance lessons, pageant coaches, costumes, and high entry fees. These fees can range from three hundred dollars and up, and these are just the entry fees. Parents will often spend $ 200 to $ 500 on photo shoots, but the greatest set backs are the designer and handmade dresses, costing as much as $ 3, 000 and another $ 100 to $ 200 for various other pageant costumes. I know people who have spent so much on pageants, they lost their trailers (Come 2). Are the stress, the time and the money really worth spending just for a trophy or a teddy bear? In contrast, there are some contests that do give out prestigious awards such as scholarship money, cash, savings bonds or even cars.
Parents who push their kids to participate in these pageants often back up their reasons for doing so with the ideas that the pageants will pave the way for their kids to get into careers such as modeling. More often than not it does happen, many child models are past or reigning beauty queens. Other reasons are the cash prizes, And sometimes the parents are blinded by the stars and the trophies and have a tendency to trust people more than they should, said Ted Cohen, president of the International Directory of Pageants, an information clearinghouse for the industry (Briggs A- 4). Some mother can turn vicious in the heat of the competition; theyve been spotted hitting their kids with shoes, dragging them off stage and into the bathroom for a good yelling, or in one case, a mother purposely burnt her dau...
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