Beauty for Babies?
Every year, 250,000 children enter child beauty pageants with one thing on their mind: winning! They strive and practice day in and day out to win first place and show that they are the best. With contestants starting from three years old and going up until twelve years old, the pageants are becoming ridiculous. Child beauty pageants are not beneficial for the little girls because it teaches them what they “should” look like, it lowers their self esteem, and can even cause a poor relationship with their parents.
Parents of little girls argue that their children asked to be in the pageant. Small children want to play outside and make friends with people their own age, not compete against them. Children competing in pageants wear the latest styles, the flashiest make-up, the prettiest hair, and sometimes fake teeth.
From a young age, children (especially little girls) should learn to see everyone as beautiful. Child beauty pageants are teaching them the exact opposite. They have to have perfect eyes, lips, teeth, and clothes to be seen as a winner. Many children could grow up to be unhappy because they don’t see themselves as good enough. It could even lead to them getting plastic surgery to become what everyone has told them their whole life was pretty.
For every child lucky enough to win a pageant, they will get their moment of glory. But what about the other contestants that aren’t seen as winners? Two-hundred and fifty thousand children enter 3,000 pageants a year. This means that 247,000 children a year aren’t picked to be number 1. What will this do to a child’s self-esteem? Parents get frustrated when a child loses. When a child is that young, and she sees her family upset or let down because of something that she did not do perfectly, it could be damaging. Parents should teach their children that its not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game, but many pageant...