Concerns for Children in Beauty Pageants
Specific Purpose: I would like to inform the audience of the concerns I have for the world of children’s beauty pageants.
Introduction
Attention Material: Imagine this: It’s 6:00am on a Friday morning and you are being woken up to be prepared for a long weekend of hairspray, make-up, gowns, basically a weekend of glitz and glamour. For some of you, this may sound a little exciting, but how about if you are only 18 months old?
Credibility material: Beauty pageants were started many years ago but became more prominent in 1921, when a hotel owner started a contest to keep tourists in town past Labor Day. The winner of this contest is called Miss America. Then, in 1960, pageants were getting so popular that a Little Miss America was started for parents who wanted their children in beauty pageants.
Tie to the audience: Today the pageant world is crossing lines, for example, some of you may be familiar with the show Toddlers and Tiaras. It gives a little insight to how beauty pageants take place for children, it also portrays some of the issues that concern me.
Preview: During this speech I will be presenting you with insight to the different ways children’s beauty pageants are detrimental to the young participants’ psychological health, how they harm the natural childhood and family relations along with how they encourage a demeaning view of women.
Body
I. To start off with, let’s discuss how pageants contribute to psychological problems, and an atmosphere in which they learn superficial, damaging values, that may turn into disorders later in life.
a. These problems can include paranoia, anxiety, feelings of inferiority, and low self-esteem.
b. Pageants create and reinforce the message that girls should capitalize on their developing beauty and sexuality and feeds into stereotypes about women that place beauty above intellect.
c. It teaches these children that, in order to win, they must transform:
i. we are...