Child Beauty Pageants

• It took the murder of his six-year-old beauty queen daughter for John Ramsey to see the harm in child beauty pageants. • I am here today because I do not want you to make the same mistake as John Ramsey did. • I am here today to protect the individuality and freedoms of our children. • I am here today to help you develop and cherish good, healthy relationships with your children. • Children who are involved with beauty pageants are much more likely to resent their parents later on, for forcing them to partake in a harmful event. • Child beauty queens are their parents’ pets—they don’t make their own decisions and they follow their parents’ demands. • Child beauty pageants are corrupting to children because they destroy the children’s individuality and creativity, and cause a great deal of harm to children. • The children are corrupted constantly, who are too young to understand the damage that is being done. • Harm corrupts the subconscious minds of pageant parents. • Harm corrupts the childhoods of pageant children and demolishes their individuality, forcing them into lives predetermined by their parents. • The sexualization of children, combined with monstrous amounts of stress and pressure, produces the ugliness that is the pageant world. • While parents might think it’s cute to dress up their child in sexy clothes, it sexualizes the children at a young age, and is mentally damaging. • Child beauty queens are their parents’ dolls—they get to dress them up and make the children “beautiful.” • Child psychologists say that child beauty queens can develop eating disorders at a young age. • Dolls model what child beauty queens aspire to be like and look like. • Dolls convince parents of what their children should be. • Dolls are what parents turn their children into. • They become deeply concerned with body image, causing bulimia and anorexia. • They are psychologically harmful in other ways as well. • Pageants teach children to look a certain way, to act a certain way, and to be perfect. • Pageants teach children that anything less than the “whole package” is not good enough. • Pageants prevent children from developing healthy relationships with their friends and families. • Parents are forcing this career on their kids, who feel obliged to play along. • Child beauty queens see how happy it makes their parents, who are often more pleased than the children. • Child beauty queens are their parents’ puppets—they follow along as the parents run the show. • In TLC’s TV show “Toddlers & Tiaras”, a majority of the beauty queens said that the only reason they participate in pageants is to please their mommies and daddies. • Selflessness replaces the children’s freedoms. • Children think it is their job to succumb to their parents’ demands • Because children want to do well in pageants for their parents’ sake, there is added pressure on the children. • Pageants put an absurd amount of stress and pressure on young children. • Child beauty queens often don’t get enough sleep because of the stress and excitement of pageants. • The lack of sleep prevents child beauty queens from developing like normal, healthy children. • There are other ways for parents to spend time with their children that aren’t physically or mentally harmful. • The side effects, both psychological and physical, of child beauty pageants are so horrifying that the mere idea of it should seem unthinkable. Treating children like dolls is inhumane. • While it might be fun to dress them up, how much damage are you willing to do to your child to make them your toy?