Beauty Pageants Negatively Affects Children

Garrison 1
Aleena Garrison
Honors English 10
Period 4
18 March 2016
Beauty Pageants Negatively Affect Children The official definition of a Beauty Contest, or pageant, is an assemblage of girls or women at which judges select the most beautiful. Although some people argue that they can be much more than a judging of feminine beauty, it is glaringly obvious that no good can come of them. Recent research shows that there is no use for child beauty pageants and they are harming our future generations (Statisticsbrain.com p.1). Children under eighteen should not be allowed to participate in beauty pageants because it ruins their self-esteem and body image, it can be classified as child abuse, and it can cause mental disorders later in life.
Body image is much more than acceptance of our physical appearance: it is our mental picture of our bodies, thoughts, feelings, judgments, sensations, awareness, and behavior. On the other hand, self-esteem is to like or accept oneself a lot, and how you look as well as what you believe in. In a nationwide survey in “USA Weekend”, nearly two out of five teens said they would feel better about themselves if they lost weight (girls) or bulked up (boys). Another survey told us that seven out of ten felt either “somewhat satisfied” or “not at all satisfied” with their looks (Bellenir p.16). Beth Dalbey says that “Pageants perpetuate unrealistic beauty standards that make women insecure and cause them to seek out expensive beauty treatments/ surgeries” (Dalbey P.1 1D). She also told us the surprising fact that women on average spend about thirty billion dollars on diet schemes annually. For every child who derives any benefit from the competition of the pageants, hundreds of others suffer damage to their self-esteem and develop warped ideas about their bodies. These examples of self-esteem in both young girls and women give insight into the problem in our
There are many causes to anxiety and people of any age can
Garrison 5 be affected by it. Causes include stress in daily life and psychological, physical or genetic conditions. Most of the time, the source of anxiety is nonspecific or not consciously known by the patient. The different types of anxiety disorders can include panic attacks, phobias, post-traumatic stress syndrome, social phobia, tics, and Tourette’s syndrome. GAD is generalized anxiety disorder which is a constant state of tension over various situations. This is usually what children in pageants suffer from because they are constantly worrying about their competition. The next disorder that beauty queens are at risk for is BDD. People who have BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder) worry about some aspect of their appearance and find it hard to receive or believe assurance from others about their physical appearance. The clues to the presence of BDD include when one is constantly comparing their appearance to others, scrutinizing the appearance of others, or often checking their appearance. Does this sound familiar? It should because these are exactly the required actions in a beauty