Child Beauty Pageants Analysis

Societal influences have the potential to negatively impact one’s body image, particularly through participation in a Child Beauty Pageant. This “extracurricular activity” introduces unrealistic ideal images to children at such a young age; children, particularly females, are impacted psychologically and physically from this controversial practice, as well as from the undesirable parenting behind it. Society as a whole is also impacted by the airing of sexualized shows such as Toddlers and Tiaras. The early introduction and exposure to a sexist and sexualized competition will ultimately damage that child’s mental health in the future. This will result in a prolonged, destructive sense of self leading into adulthood. In Henry A. Giroux’s article,
The presence of a child as an “endangered species” (32) is also the result of social efforts, victimizing children and leaving them vulnerable. The author argues how Child Beauty Pageants “[market] children as objects of pleasure, desire and sexuality” (36), suggesting them as, sometimes, a model of child abuse, a major injustice in American society. He utilizes Jonbenet Ramsey’s tragic murder case as an example for disturbing practices that employ accounts of childhood virtue (36). The six-year-old pageant queen was found killed in her home,several years after she was unrightfully forced into adulthood early by her parents to participate in pageants and portraying herself as a national sex symbol, “a degrading aesthetic that sexualized and commodified her” (37). Her innocence was stolen by a corrupted industry and fame-hungry parents, preventing her from enjoying the experiences of a jubilant childhood prior to her death. This disturbs the necessity of a child’s innocence, ultimately affecting society as a whole by offering another form of child abuse in poor-parenting pageant form (Giroux). The case tests America on encountering the ever-so-common essence of child abuse, a culture that that has turned to finding joy in viewing the improper exposure of defenseless children (38). The author also discusses the fraudulent sense of self-esteem these young girls endure from pageants, where it is “defined within a very narrow standard of autonomy” (41), based on a contestant’s ability to solely look the best, which is problematic for future development. Child abuse has evidently become a staple in American society despite its many