There’s a new show debuting this week on TLC called Toddlers and Tiaras. I am usually a fan if TLC’s programing, including wholesome shows like Little People Big World and Jon and Kate Plus 8. When I saw the commercial for this new show, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I did a little research and found that parents all over the world are pushing their kids into beauty pageants…and they don’t stop there. At what cost are these parents doing this to their children? Are they doing it to give their children a future filled with opportunities, or are they doing it for their own recognition?
It starts as early as when they’re babies. A mother notices the sparkle in her child’s beautiful eyes, their golden curly locks, rosy cheeks and pouty pink lips. ‘I have a beautiful child,’ she may think, and leaves it alone. She then starts seeing ads in magazines, newspapers and all over the internet for photo contests. She submits a few photos of her beautiful baby and wins some cash for first place. Then the greed inside of this woman starts to surface and she thinks, ‘Maybe a baby beauty pageant would win us a little extra cash?’ So, she finds a local pageant for not children, but babies, and enters her child. Every mother thinks their child is the most beautiful child in the world compared to any other, so she will except nothing less than first place. The judges see her beautiful child, and agree that the child deserves first place. The grand prize is one hundred dollars, and it continues.
Pageants are being held all over the world for children of every age, gender and race. Pageant parents have admitted that they’ve said in the past that they would never allow their child to wear make up or prance around in the little pageant outfits they dress them in, but once they start winning, it’s hard to stop.
Could you imagine your three year old on stage, looking like a gypsy? If they were dressed in a Disney Princess costume, it would be adorable…you know, like for play time or for Halloween, but that is seldom the case in these pageants where toddlers are dressed in little to nothing and made to prance around on stage! There’s a gown portion, a talent portion, and sadly- a bathing suit portion of the program. Your three year old baby is being judged on how well they can strut their stuff on stage in a bikini! They should be at gymboree! Mothers and sometimes the fathers too, are layering make up on their children, putting on false eyelashes and spray tans!
And it doesn’t stop there. Some continue the competitions because of their competitive nature. Some parents stop caring about their children’s needs just because they have to beat so and so this one time. Some do it because the children start becoming very vain, and it’s been drilled into their heads that they are beauty queens and they will compete as beauty queens all of their lives.
As the children grow into young women, they struggle with eating disorders to stay thin. They work on talents they don’t have or want to have to appease their parents- anything that will equal a win, which equals their parents love.
Vicki Moses of California has been entering her daughter in children’s pageants since she was four years old. Her daughter is now fifteen, and is beginning to resent her mother for making her enter these pageants because she wants to go to the movies with her friends and eat popcorn, something that Vicki strictly forbids her daughter to do. “She wants to win as much as I want her to win, deep down. She thinks she wants to hang out with her friends on Saturdays. She thinks she’s missing something, but I know she’s not. I keep trying to tell her that, but she doesn’t hear me. I am grooming her to become Miss America someday. I’ve given everything I have to this child’s pageant career and she doesn’t appreciate it one bit. She doesn’t know how good she has it,” Vicki said.
But does Vicki’s daughter really have it so well? She wants to be with her friends. She wants a normal childhood, which none of these little beauty queens will ever see. Vicki’s daughter has never been allowed to sleep over at a friend’s house or go to a birthday party, because her weekends have been devoted to pageants for the past eleven years.
How can a child develop properly and have a normal childhood when their parents run them into the ground with the stage? What kind of message does this send to other young girls who are living and get to have that normal childhood? We put huge expectations on our children at much too young an age these days. Parents will always want what’s best for their children, but at what point do we start listening to them, hearing what they want? Some folks think that children are children and that they don’t know what they want. I say children are people, and they do know what they want, and are just as capable as adults are in telling someone else what that may be.
Homework and school affairs often take a back seat during pageant seasons. Annie Gerschwitz of Texas started her daughter in pageants at ten years old. Her daughter is now seventeen and faces not being able to graduate with her peers this spring due to her poor grades. Her attendance has been less than acceptable, combined with low test scores. She has fallen asleep in class several times and been reprimanded for wearing clothes that are considered too revealing and break the school dress code. Annie has pulled her daughter out of school so many times for pageants that she may not get to graduate high school for another year and a half- if she’s willing to go back to school full time and abide by the rules. “She’s really devastated about graduation. I guess it’s partially my fault, but she’s done so well in the pageants. I know she has what it takes to be model material and hit it big someday. She doesn’t need a high school diploma to make heads turn, that’s for sure,” Annie said in an e-mail interview.
As parents, maybe we’ll have to start worrying about what our kids see on “safe” networks. Maybe this new show is more for the parents, anyway. Are we supposed to feel sorry for these people? I feel sorry for the kids. I want to yank them out of those stupid outfits, put them in a pair of overalls and stick them in a sand box! The next time you see an ad for a pageant or photo contest, think twice before entering your child. Are you doing it for them or for you? Is it something you’ve always wanted for yourself, but your ship has sailed? Just because we can live vicariously through our children, it does not mean we should push them into doing ridiculous things for money or recognition or self satisfaction. Listen to your kids. If they want to dig in the dirt, let them- they may grow up to be a Master Gardener, something that would make mom and dad proud.
