“Little Miss America”
By Shonte Daniels
We all agree children are growing up too quickly. With provocative music videos, video games, and other forms of entertainment, kids eventually leave their bikes, jump ropes and sidewalk chalk for booty shorts, leggings and tube tops. However, is it truly their fault, or is the fault of their parents? Blaming parents for allowing their children to listen or watch certain things can be debatable, because some believe they shouldn’t force their kids to do anything, while others think it’s a main factor in parenthood. Still, there are certain circumstances where it is the parent’s fault. A perfect example of this, in this case, is the growing phenomenon of little girl pageants.
In this day and age, women already complain about adult pageants because they represent the old-fashioned version of a woman: the perfect, fit, dainty, multi-talented, smart man-needer. Yet we’ve grown thicker skin and become our own people. It’s no longer about flaunting our assets; it’s about showing we’re just as good as men. So, if women pageants are so controversial, imagine what a two year-old pageant does to the female society. Little girls dressing up in baby-doll dresses, wearing excessive amounts of make-up, putting in fake teeth when there’s hasn’t come in yet, and spraying unhealthy hair spray while their over-controlling mothers hover over them. Sometimes it’s hard to believe they’re actually having fun up there on that stage.
Most mothers claim they only put their children into pageants because the child wants to do it. Sometimes, that’s hard to believe. In such shows as “Toddlers and Tiaras” on TLC, we see the ins and outs of the pageant experience. Mothers hire professional instructors to teach their kids how to dance, smile and walk. Aren’t kids supposed to be cute already? Does all this extra nonsense really make them more cute, or rather just extremely creepy? Then, during the performances, the mothers in the background dance with their kids, making sure they don’t forget any steps. Fathers, comically, are either not there at all or quietly sitting in the background. The men seem to be the only parents with any sense in these situations.
When you hear older women on “Toddlers and Tiaras” saying, “I love a show that makes me look like a good mother!” it’s clear these mothers have issues. Let’s please just take our children off the stages, wash them, put them near a nice book, and teach them about what they can be when they’re older. If one day they want to be in pageants, let them. Until then, try to keep them as childlike as they can be.
November 3rd, 2009 at 9:29 am
These parents are nuts…and the fathers are to blame, too! You wonder what problems these girls will have, down the road.
December 1st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Multi-talented and smart, you say? Are you sure you haven’t mixed up what you’re talking about? Another problem, which actually fuels this stereotype, is the emphasis on beauty over personality and intelligence. Let’s face it, when we think of the winners of such beauty pageants, their incomparable wit and acumen don’t quite come to mind. In fact, it’s just the opposite! I’m not agreeing with it, or saying this is always true, but attractive women are usually thought of as unintelligent. The message that these pageants seem to convey is that if you’re pretty, you’re pretty much set for life, and I believe that is an awful message to send to people.
December 2nd, 2009 at 11:11 am
I believe this story is meant to show exactly what you’re upset about. Adult pageants make women do things like pose in bathing suits and eveniing gowns and do some strange talent to win over the judges. This article is NOT to praise pageants but to object to them.
April 21st, 2010 at 5:54 am
It never ceases to amaze me at the amount of IGNORANCE that is apparent when ever I read another article written by someone who knows ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about child beauty pageants. All you are proving, when you write one of these articles, is that you either (A) have issues, that still haunt you, of a childhood where you were either not considered attractive or you weren’t popular…or BOTH, (B) you have issues with your parents…that they wouldn’t let you compete in such an arena, so you are jealous, or (C) you have children of your own that couldn’t compete in this area so you feel the need to lash out against those who do. If you were ever really to sit down with one of these children that compete, 95% of them would tell you that they ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT….the weekends spent in a hotel where they are catered too, then after competition they get to go swimming with their pageant friends or go out to a special place in the new town they are in. They love the travel, but most of all they love the TOYS and PRIZES they get. You see, most pageant children are a little spoiled….they get a lot of gifts when they compete, and lets make no bones about it- I have yet to have met a child that didn’t like prizes and gifts. The stage make-up and clothes are just that…they are FOR THE STAGE! These children don’t walk around like this on the street. It is no different than if the child were a dancer or in the theater (which, actually a lot of them are)…they would have to wear STAGE MAKEUP! And the fact that most of you say their childhood is thrown away by having to compete in these pageants every weekend shows that 97% of you really do know NOTHING about these pageants. You see, to compete in a pageant takes a great deal of money, and most of the parents can’t afford to do it every weekend. So, they pick and choose which pageants they will compete in for the year, and those are the ones they go to. The AVERAGE pageant child competes in no more than 10 national pageants a year, if that many. So, lets see, 52 weeks in a year, and only 10 or less spent at a pageant means they have at least 42 weekends left in the year that is spent on softball, football (yes, I know many girls that play football…with the boys), riding their 4-wheelers, or just spending the weekend with their families and friends. Next, you seem to make a snide comment on the intelligence of these girls, and it seems you do it based on an old stereo-type of the “bubble-headed, bleach blond bimbo beauty queen” that television has come to portray contestants as….let me tell you first of that I was a child competitor and winner of over 500 beauty pageants, talent contests and modeling competitions…I also have a BA in Communications (where I graduated with honors with an over-all GPA of 3.795 and a 4.0 in my major), and I have a MBA in Business Administration and Computer Science…but lets not talk about me….the children that compete in these pageants have an array of brains about them all. You have your honor roll students (which most of them are), then you have your “average” students. But, I have NEVER met a pageant child that was a “bad” student…EVER! These are extremely bright and intelligent young ladies. Now I will move on to their philanthropies….most pageant contestants do a considerable amount of charity work (please visit http://savannah-bradford.com/index.html for a wonderful example of a teen, who was a child competitor, and competes now on the glitz and natural circuit. You will see she is an honor roll student and dedicates a lot of her time to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America as merely ONE of her charitable contributions). They do this as part of their pageant competition (but really does it matter WHY they do it, but the fact that THEY DO IT)!!!! These children commit more time to others than most people commit to in a lifetime.
I could go on and on, but why? As an intelligent “former beauty queen” and now mother, I know that no matter what I say, you, nor many others who are against this “girlie sport” will ever really change your mind about pageants. No, it is more fun for you to run your mouth and write articles about which you know NOTHING about. What ever happened to “journalistic integrity”? And if you are basing your knowledge (and I use that term lightly) of child pageantry on TLC’s “Toddlers and Tiara’s” or “Little Miss Perfect”, then you are poorly informed on which you write. As a “journalist” (and, once again, I use that term in the loosest sense), you should know that programs like that are a tabloid on film. They set most of those scenarios up to get the most “shock and awe” value as possible. After all, if it showed how much fun the girls were having and all of the good aspects of pageantry, who would watch it.
Now, are there some parents who are “over-bearing” and over zealous when it comes to their daughters competing….OF COURSE THERE ARE! But that is true in ANY child sport or activity. In one prominent case an irate father killed another as a result of a dispute at a youth hockey match. Another father, enraged that his daughter had been suspended from her softball team for missing a game to attend a prom, brutally assaulted the team’s coach with an aluminum baseball bat. At a football game for six and seven-year-old’s, a father who believed his son wasn’t getting enough playing time was arrested after pulling out a gun and threatening the coach. Another mother was arrested after arranging to have another child’s mother killed because both of their daughters were going out for cheerleader and she thought if the other girl was distraut over the death of her mother then she wouldn’t be able to try-out. You see, as long as there are children participating in extra-curricular activities, there will be parents who always take it a little too far. That has nothing to do with the activity in question, it has to do with the mental stability of the parent…nothing more, nothing less. As a modeling coach for many years, I always encouraged a parent to pursue other activities if I saw the child wasn’t enjoying it as much as the parent was. It is up to the parent then, to decide…are they in it for the child, or for themselves. But again, that is true in ANY CHILD ACTIVITY!
So please, stop writing stories on subjects of which you are sadly misinformed. It only makes you look ignorant. Let’s face it, no one would be interested in this sport if it weren’t for the tragic death of Jon-Benet Ramsey. Yes, her death was horrible and tragic, but it had NOTHING TO DO WITH CHILD PAGEANTRY. That was just one aspect of her life, and if you really did your research, you would find out that she didn’t really compete that much. Had Jon-Benet been a soccer player, do you think her death would have gotten the media attention it did??? NO! It would have been reported, and then a week later sadly forgotten by the rest of the world. But a soccer player wouldn’t have made for good tabloid fodder now would it. How sad for you all.