Professor Ashkiani
English 115
June 19, 2013 CHILD BEAUTY PAGEANTS Children are masters of fantastical ideas, and these pageants can be a plentiful playground for their fantasies to come to life. But these fantasies can come at a high price and self worth. Child beauty pageants are contests that feature children less than eighteen years of age. These competitions are categorized in talent, interview, casual wear etcetera; contestants wear makeup and elaborate complex hairstyles and fitted outfits to represent their routines. But how does it develop the child while they grow into becoming adults as these beauty pageants could harm the child’s well-being as the child looses their sense of their childhood. Sheldy Colene Pannell, a sociologist questions why parents would subject their children to gender socialization on TLC’s hit television series are specially criticized negatively influencing to children that their physical appearance will score them attention and win prizes and pageants. While child pageants are not inherently sexual there are types of pageants that create an atmosphere which heavy makeup emphasizes full lips and flushed cheeks. Syd brown a child and adolescent psychologist implies “when you have them looking order, for a lot of people that means looking sexier. I don’t think it’s a great idea for girls at that age to be focused so much on their sexuality.” There have been reports of children that have been sexually abused; these researches have shown that the sexualization of child beauty pageants is a contributing factor to these abuses. Also if the child wins constantly by her seductive looks she or he is more likely to develop psychological issues later in their lives, as they soon figure out that they could obtain what they want just on good looks. Lucia Grosorv in her everyday psychology article claims that a female child is very prone to develop eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia as she focuses so