Is it a way of earning money or throwing it away? Is it a way to build a person up or to tear them down? Is it a way to be a role model or a way to be ridiculed? These questions can most commonly be heard when discussing beauty pageants. There is an ongoing controversy about the benefits or harm that beauty pageants can cause to their contestants. There are two-sides to every controversy, but in the matter of pageants the benefits of entering one easily outweighs the negatives.…
With influences everywhere to be this “perfect” and “beautiful” woman all she can think about is how she compares to the others. Trying to always be just as perfect as the models who are fake impacts women in negative ways which can lead to tough situations later down the road. Parents that try to put their kids into beauty pageants need to realize that you are only hurting your child in the long run because they aren’t always going to look like that. They will see their true beauty and hate it because they are so used to being fake beautiful. Society needs a reality check because beauty does not depend on if you have flawless skin, if you have great eyelashes or even if you are a size zero. Beauty depends on who a person is inside and out. The most beautiful thing of all is to be a strong, confident, daring, and loving young woman not to be a cranky, angry, starving, and fake…
Beauty pageants made their first appearances in America during the 1920’s, where women flaunted around casinos, determined to win a crown for their physical attractiveness. The owner of the casino where these activities occurred, figured that this would attract more tourists. Throughout the years, more modern pageants were formed, like Ms. USA and Ms. America. Following in the footsteps of its adult form, child beauty pageants merged into the 1960’s. Child beauty pageants usually consist of modeling sportswear, evening wear, and showing off any special talent they may have. Judges critique the girls individually, based on their physical looks, poise, confidence, and perfection. To the judges, this is called “the complete package.” Although the objective of most child pageants is to build confidence and self-worth, beauty pageants can be considered exploitive to minors by causing them to believe in unrealistic ideas about beauty.…
This article focuses on the effect of child beauty pageants has on the young girls and sometimes girls participating. Many problems rise from participation such as self-esteem issues and also problems with self-identity. “Education takes a back seat,” says Cartwright, author of the article, presenting another issue. She also concludes that the vigor of these pageants can be too much for these young children and that the parents either don’t care or don’t see it. This article is credible being that it’s written by Martina M. Cartwright, Ph.D., R.D., in Food For Thought. It’s also credible in that the website, Psychology Today, is where the article is found. This website is solely focused on issues in the psychology realm. This source was helpful also providing me with extensive detail and presenting the difference of society’s views and the pageants mom’s views on the topic.…
Perhaps no time in history have body image standards had such an enormous impact on society. With today's mass media people can be subjected to thousands of images and messages daily, portraying the "ideal" body image. The people most often portrayed and effected by these messages are young women. Females can feel constant pressure to live up to these ideals which are most often unattainable. This pressure can cause detrimental physical and mental states. To fully understand this problem we must first ask ourselves, "Why?" Why has the female body been pushed to the forefront of society and media? It is undeniable that it is merely a marketing ploy. The beauty sector is a multibillion dollar a year industry. Companies such as Revlon, Cover Girl, Maybelline, L'Oreal insist that girls must look a certain way if they want to be anything. These corporations are only concerned with the bottom line. They take no responsibility for the negative image that they portray, in fact, that is what they thrive on. The worse self-image a woman has, the more beauty products she will buy to try and "improve" her looks. And there is no better way to make her think she is ugly than to subject her to thousands of unrealistic, airbrushed pictures of models to compare herself to. This way of thinking is further drilled into the female mind through women's magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue and so on. Never do you find an article entitled "Big is Beautiful". More often you will find "How to lose 20 lb.. so your man will love you!" sprawled across the cover of the latest issue. Occasionally magazines will run a heart touching article about an ex-models fight with bulimia. They will often forget to mention, however, that the same model was portrayed as the pinnacle of health and beauty on the cover of last years April issue. The beauty industry and magazines are not the sole cause of the problem though, there is plenty of blame to go around. And so we look to…
THESIS: Joining a female child in a beauty pageant should be controlled because it damages their body image that leads to various disorders, financial strain to the parents, and materialism and sexualization.…
In the article “Child Beauty Pageants ‘About Parents Feeling Good, Not Kids’”, a registered dietician named Martina M. Cartwright was interviewed about her pageant experience and she said, “”Everything was based on what these kids look like and the way that children were displayed or dressed. They were fully made up; they looked like adult women, pint-size. They were judged on personality, but none spoke a word.” The statement that these girls are being judged on their personalities, but never speak a single word, truly shows how corrupt these pageants are. Pageants show kids that a person can be beautiful on the outside, but hideous on the inside, and still succeed in life. If kids grow up with the mentality that they can get everything just because they have a pretty face, they will not get very far. Children should be taught that a great personality, and intelligence will help them get what they need, because one day when they’re old, and can’t rely on their looks to get the job done, what will they do? How can people just sit back while these little girls are taught such poor…
But it is not only on pageants, we can see this same example in Fashion magazines, ads, music videos, and toys. For example, toy companies sell dolls that wear miniskirts, and short shirts with high heels. This reminds me of my childhood where I always wanted to be just like my Barbie, I thought being skinny and having a gorgeous look like a Barbie was the ideal body for a girl. Later in the years I realized that this mentality was so wrong and it only harmed my self…
A girl should not be judged on her looks. When you teach kids that beauty is only on the outside it can cause major problems, not only health problems but social and physical and mental problems also. If a beautiful girl enters a pageant and doesn't win she will start to consider herself ugly or fat or too skinny. Many beauty pageant girls end up being anorexic because they think they need to like a Barbie doll during the pageant. Many girls perceive that they are not skinny enough because they have been told that they need to eat right and stay at a certain weight if they want to win the pageants.…
A child’s self-esteem is a fragile element. Advocates for child pageants believe beauty pageants boost children’s self-esteem by the attention they receive for being dolled up, dancing and singing and winning awards for placing higher than the other children. But as fast as self-esteem can be built up by a sentence of praise or a trophy, it can be just as easily shut down by not being good enough for someone…
It is no surprise that every girl, young and old, wants to be or at least feel beautiful. But it is a surprise when self-destruction and low self-esteem defines the word beauty. We ask ourselves, why is this happening? Why are there so many headlines in newspapers about young girls committing suicide? It’s time to stop asking why and start asking what the problem is. What is the cause of the issue and is there any way to solve it? There can be many roots to the problem but the one I want to focus on in this paper is children beauty pageants. Some people think that beauty pageants are good for children but I personally do not think children should participate in beauty pageants because they create a pathway to eating disorders, low self-esteem, and can be more easily targeted by predators. Parents think that they are doing them well but in reality, the child competing is being deprived from a normal childhood and the parents are only harming them. The children are being taught that their body and attractiveness will determine how pretty they are and that sexuality at a young age is a good quality.…
Too much expectations to be skinny, beautiful, and flawless are the main reasons why some women develop eating disorders and body image dissatisfaction (Cartwright). Even women who leave the pageant world have developed self-identity issues and some psychological issues from being involved with pageants in the first place. Dressing young girls as if they are much older and over-sexualizing them in pageants can lead to long-term negative psychological effects (Carwright). Pro-pageants may argue that participating in pageants can be a great experience and lead to a successful career. Pageants teach children confidence and good social skills at an early age which could benefit them in the future.…
A study has shown that, "(Although) many pageant parents attributed their daughters' higher self-esteem to pageantry, the high self-esteem was mostly true for girls who won the pageants. Not for the girls who lost the peagents.…
She takes a neutral opinion about beauty pageants and sheds light on some positive effects surrounding beauty pageants as well as the negative on young girls. In the article, she writes about the different types of pageants. The first pageant discussed is one that involves contestants performing a talent and participating in an interview in order to win a prize aimed toward their education, such as a scholarship for college. The second type of pageant talked about is the pageant based only on the physical appearance of the contestant. These types of pageants often do not contain an education prize to the winner. She argues that the second type of pageant objectify young girls and make them believe that only outward beauty is important. She then opposes her statement by saying there is no reason that young girls should be ashamed of flaunting their physically beauty. I think this article has potential to be useful in my paper. It gives both a positive and negative view of beauty…
In the article Beauty Pageants and Children: It’s Not Always Pretty by Zawn Villines is states that “Pageants, particularly those designed for younger children, focus primarily on appearance, attire, and perceived “cuteness.” Talent competitions occur in some pageants and often are a secondary component of the experience. Thus, pageants suggest to young children that there is value in focusing on their appearance as judged through the eyes of others. This can lead to significant body-image distortions, and adults who once participated in child beauty pageants may experience low self-esteem and poor body image”(Goodtherapy). Another piece of evidence to support this is “In February 2007, the American Psychological Association released a report on the sexualization of girls that found that girls' exposure to hypersexualized media content can negatively impact their cognitive and emotional development; is strongly associated with eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression” (CNN.com). This evidence showed that not only the sexualization was a problem but because of it this caused low self-esteem and mental health problems.…