The Ugliness of Pre-Teen Beauty Pageants
This clip from "Little Miss Sunshine" demonstrates the ludicrousness of pre-teen beauty pageants as Olive does a pseudo strip-tease taught to her by her grandfather. The other mothers in the audience freak out about the dance and leave the auditorium, but the irony lies in the fact that their daughter's faces are painted like 20-something pop-stars or even worse, prostitutes. The competition starts off with a bathing suit competition, with a majority of the girls in bikinis, which is just plain wrong.
If think this is just a movie, think again. Take a look at this link full of pre-teen beauty contestants who are so dolled up by their stage mothers that it is hard to imagine that they will not suffer ill-effects later on. After this link appeared on Reddit, one woman commented and started a new thread about her own experiences as a pre-teen beauty contestant pageant, which included severely troubling issues relating to self-esteem, depression, and anxiety.
Since when is it ok to dress up little girls like grown up pop stars and/or prostitutes? Why is it necessary to put little girls in bikinis and prance them around the stage as if they are practicing for an actual cat-walk? Not only does it falsely teach the girls that nothing matters beyond their looks, it send out the wrong message to society as well.
In our culture that sells sex, the perfect sized 2 and the perfect spray-on tan, how are women getting their true value from life? The pre-teen competitions lead into the teen competitions, and then the beauty contestant industry. Look around any high school and ask how many girls want to be models for their careers. Not only does the the beauty pageant/modeling industry encourage those in the business to starve themselves and wear inappropriate clothing at early ages, it encourages the rest of the girls and women in society to do the same as well.
A grown woman has choice of how she wants to express herself sexually and I am fully on board with that, but there should be nothing sexual about a little girl's make up or clothing. The damage to the girls is immeasurable and the strange effects dolling up little girls has on society are equally hard to discern. I think it is but a small step for a pre-teen adolescent dressed in this disturbing style to the next step of becoming a sexually active thirteen-year-old girl. Whatever we like to think about our sexually adventurous society, I think that the process should be delayed until at least post-pubescence.
