the pageant america

Child Beauty pageants represent a five billion dollar a year industry that puts on approximately five thousand pageants each year. In fact, The Learning Channel television show, Toddlers and Tiaras, is dedicated to following these pageant families as they train their children to perform suggestive dance routines and drag the youngsters from event to event. The pageant parents are a driving force behind the sexualization of their children, but the problem goes beyond a few eccentric parents. Not one of the stylists, coaches, judges or, administrators seems at all uncomfortable teaching these developing beings that if they aren’t perfect, they will fail. With rising concerns about the way our teenage girls associate their appearance with their worth, how can society be content with imposing these values on infants and toddlers? Child beauty pageants reflect views that equate attractiveness with success by rewarding children with trophies for being the most beautiful, and making them feel guilty when they aren’t. In teaching them to associate an unrealistic idealization of beauty whit success through out life, we are setting them up to never be satisfied with their bodies, and constantly ashamed of they way they look . This mentality may be extreme and obvious in pageantry, but it extends beyond that, into the homes and minds of every American family. In a world where women’s issues, and women’s rights are ever more attracting attention and notoriety, how is our culture internally becoming more misogynistic?