No more toddling in tiaras

Photo courtesy of TLC

Nothing seems more antiquated to me than allowing young girls to be paraded around against their will and be judged as “most beautiful.” It’s time to end the practice of child beauty pageantry once and for all.

Because they are children, none of the contestants in a child beauty pageant can legally consent to participating. It is an activity wholly foisted on the child by their parents. 

While pageant contestants over the age of 18 grasp concepts such as autonomy and identity, child beauty pageant contestants have harmful ideas imprinted on them from a young age. Little girls learn that one will be rewarded for dressing up, pleasing an audience and being beautiful, when the simple truth remains that beauty is subjective.

This “dress-up” often extends far beyond pretty clothes and tiaras. It routinely steps over the line into the overt sexualization of children, particularly the sexualization of young girls, considering pageant “participants” are nearly all females. 

Child beauty pageants encourage children to wear heavy makeup, fake hair and make suggestive motions like blowing kisses towards judges to win competitions. “Participants” routinely wear clothing that is considered suggestive, such as crop tops and short skirts. As such, pageant “participants” intertwine success and sexualization from a young age.

Parents should be doing the opposite of contributing to the early sexualization of their daughters, considering that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that an appalling 50% of women will experience sexual violence during their lifetime and 80% of sexual violence goes unreported.

Further, these pageants provide an opportunity for adults to sexually exploit children. 

One convicted pedophile in Canada, speaking of a popular child beauty pageant show, was quoted as saying “It’s legal eye candy that nobody will admit.” 

It begs the question, is the man recording at the back of a pageant a family member or a predator? At least one winner of the adult Miss America pageant was sexually molested as a child, meaning that this may be happening to many other girls.

And what of the effect on the girls themselves? Wonderlich et al. reports that “Childhood pageant participants scored higher on body dissatisfaction, interpersonal distrust and impulse dysregulation than non-participants and showed a trend toward greater ineffectiveness.” S. H. Thompson and K. Hammond report that, among 131 child beauty pageant contestants surveyed, “Over one-fourth (26%) of the women had been told or perceived they had an eating disorder … Almost half (48.5%) reported wanting to be thinner and 57% were trying to lose weight.” 

These statistics prove that disordered eating can be a direct result of child beauty pageants.

The American Psychological Association also found that the “Sexualization of Girls is Linked to Common Mental Health Problems in Girls and Women – Eating Disorders, Low Self-Esteem and Depression.” Not to mention, chemicals commonly found in hairspray – often used at these pageants – can damage hormonal cycles, and the wearing of high heels by young contestants can lead to permanent damage in leg muscles and bones. These young girls are being led down a path of future, irreversible health problems that should not be permitted.

It is clear that child beauty pageants are destructive. In order to solve the issue of child sexualization through beauty pageants, citizens can urge their senators to ban beauty pageants under the age of 18. This harmful and repressive industry is doing more harm than good and should never have existed in the first place.