Beauty Pageants Essay
Beauty pageants have been said to allow young girls in today’s society to feel beautiful, and more self worthy as they get older. In reality, beauty pageants cause psychological issues formulated by the unrealistic norms set by society and pageants. Some of the negative influences for young girls and their beauty also come from certain celebrity influences. These influences are seen as societies “norm” for beauty, such as models with little to no clothing on, and other celebrities that promote beauty with loads of makeup and plastic surgeries to meet the “norm”. The pressure these influences put on girls causes the girls (to repetitive, replace the word girls) to view themselves as not “pretty enough” which can lead to worse psychological
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Young girls do need a positive way to express themselves, however beauty pageants main focus is on the outward appearance, and does not focus on inner beauty. Some will say that beauty pageants are superficial and sexualize women in the sense that they are only objects that obsess over their appearance. The fact of the matter is that beauty pageants influence unhealthy behaviors and allows girls to feel inferior to each other instead of viewing each other as friends or allies who are all facing the same unrealistic norms of beauty. Anne Dingus, a former senior editor for Texas Monthly brings up the topic of how wonderful and inviting beauty pageants really can be, as well as brining up the fact that even viewers who watch pageants at home “cannot deny their love for the Miss America pageant.” In a way these viewers are blinded to the reality of the pageant world unless it is a parent. Mothers who put their young daughters at the ages of four and five years old into these pageants have their own opinions of the harsh words they receive on a daily bases about their daughters in pageants. One parent states that “everyone acts like I am trying to sexualize my daughter, but it's ridiculous. If I put Maddy in a Jason costume for Halloween, would people think I was trying to turn her into a serial killer?” ( Charlotte Triggs, with Kay West, Elaine
Young girls do need a positive way to express themselves, however beauty pageants main focus is on the outward appearance, and does not focus on inner beauty. Some will say that beauty pageants are superficial and sexualize women in the sense that they are only objects that obsess over their appearance. The fact of the matter is that beauty pageants influence unhealthy behaviors and allows girls to feel inferior to each other instead of viewing each other as friends or allies who are all facing the same unrealistic norms of beauty. Anne Dingus, a former senior editor for Texas Monthly brings up the topic of how wonderful and inviting beauty pageants really can be, as well as brining up the fact that even viewers who watch pageants at home “cannot deny their love for the Miss America pageant.” In a way these viewers are blinded to the reality of the pageant world unless it is a parent. Mothers who put their young daughters at the ages of four and five years old into these pageants have their own opinions of the harsh words they receive on a daily bases about their daughters in pageants. One parent states that “everyone acts like I am trying to sexualize my daughter, but it's ridiculous. If I put Maddy in a Jason costume for Halloween, would people think I was trying to turn her into a serial killer?” ( Charlotte Triggs, with Kay West, Elaine