Beauty Pageants
Beauty Pageants: Good or Bad? Beauty pageants for children are growing more and more popular and, in turn, causing more and more controversy. Everyone has a different opinion on them but most would say that it is a bad idea to put young girls through this kind of thing. I would have to agree with them. These types of beauty pageants began back in the 1960s where children from the ages of 6 to 12 years modeled things like sportswear and evening clothes and showcased their talents. There was a lot less make up involved and the look was very natural. Today, however, these pageants a far less conservative and have a completely different air to them. Their parents bury their girls from ages 0-18 in makeup, extensions, spray tans, and even go so far as to give them false teeth. Then they parade them around the stage half dressed, competing for titles that are focused around this artificial beauty. Beauty pageants are bad for these young girls and can have detrimental effects on them. These pageants are an unhealthy kind of competition that promote the wrong values, instill perfectionism into the children, and are also a show for not only the judges, but child predators as well. Competition is an important part of a child’s life. It pushes them to try their hardest and do the best they can. Be that as it may, that is not the case with these child beauty pageants. It is a well-known fact that some people are naturally prettier than others and there is only so hard a child can try to be pretty. When they try that hard and still don’t get the title of “Prettiest Smile” or “Most Beautiful” or whichever one it is that they are competing for, it is a huge blow to their self-confidence and sense self-worth. What that loss says to those girls is, “You lose because you’re not pretty enough,” and that leads them to believe that the most important thing is beauty. Even if they do win, they may begin to believe that they are “higher and mightier” than the others because they were