Annotated Bibliography
Kiera Nisby
Dr. Florcyzk
English 2000 Section
February 4, 2014
Destroying or Building a Healthy Lifestyle? Beauty pageants made their first appearances in America during the 1920’s, where women flaunted around casinos, determined to win a crown for their physical attractiveness. The owner of the casino where these activities occurred, figured that this would attract more tourists. Throughout the years, more modern pageants were formed, like Ms. USA and Ms. America. Following in the footsteps of its adult form, child beauty pageants merged into the 1960’s. Child beauty pageants usually consist of modeling sportswear, evening wear, and showing off any special talent they may have. Judges critique the girls individually, based on their physical looks, poise, confidence, and perfection. To the judges, this is called “the complete package.” Although the objective of most child pageants is to build confidence and self-worth, beauty pageants can be considered exploitive to minors by causing them to believe in unrealistic ideas about beauty. Parents spend an enormous amount of money to prepare their daughters for just one pageant at a time. Expenses go towards hotel, travel expenses, evening gowns, beauty, and maintenance. “Parents also hire pageant coaches, who charge hourly rates to polish kids’ competition skills.” (ProtectingPageantPrincesses) Children are often placed under enormous pressure to perform flawlessly. They often experience long practice sessions that interfere with sleep, school, and other social activities. Seeing a four, five, or six year old girl get on the stage and prance around with false teeth, spray tan, make up, big hair, and wink at adult judges is very outraging. Seeing their over enthusiastic mothers is shocking as well. It may not be understandable to a four, five, or six year old that the cute and fun stuff that they are doing is really showing off sexuality. But they do have parents that have extremely more knowledge than them to
Dr. Florcyzk
English 2000 Section
February 4, 2014
Destroying or Building a Healthy Lifestyle? Beauty pageants made their first appearances in America during the 1920’s, where women flaunted around casinos, determined to win a crown for their physical attractiveness. The owner of the casino where these activities occurred, figured that this would attract more tourists. Throughout the years, more modern pageants were formed, like Ms. USA and Ms. America. Following in the footsteps of its adult form, child beauty pageants merged into the 1960’s. Child beauty pageants usually consist of modeling sportswear, evening wear, and showing off any special talent they may have. Judges critique the girls individually, based on their physical looks, poise, confidence, and perfection. To the judges, this is called “the complete package.” Although the objective of most child pageants is to build confidence and self-worth, beauty pageants can be considered exploitive to minors by causing them to believe in unrealistic ideas about beauty. Parents spend an enormous amount of money to prepare their daughters for just one pageant at a time. Expenses go towards hotel, travel expenses, evening gowns, beauty, and maintenance. “Parents also hire pageant coaches, who charge hourly rates to polish kids’ competition skills.” (ProtectingPageantPrincesses) Children are often placed under enormous pressure to perform flawlessly. They often experience long practice sessions that interfere with sleep, school, and other social activities. Seeing a four, five, or six year old girl get on the stage and prance around with false teeth, spray tan, make up, big hair, and wink at adult judges is very outraging. Seeing their over enthusiastic mothers is shocking as well. It may not be understandable to a four, five, or six year old that the cute and fun stuff that they are doing is really showing off sexuality. But they do have parents that have extremely more knowledge than them to