Beauty Pageants

The contemporary society has built so much hype around being a beauty pageant for all girls. The looming advantages are that one would become a celebrity, a fashion model for one of the best clothes designers and earn a covetable standard of living without struggling for a long time. This issue has infiltrated the society to the extent that young girls at the ages of four to eight have been forced to undergo gruel some processes in the name of beauty. I think it is unfair to them, and this needs to be stopped.

My question is, is it all worth it. Some beauty pageants claim that the process is just a series of harmless fun. They claim that when the girls perform in the beauty contests, they build on their stage presentation, personal confidence and will eventually shine in public speaking. In addition, the winners will earn a college scholarship, one of the most coveted prices of the painful ordeal. Cash rewards and some tiaras highly cherished by other children are all gains that are attributed to winning such beauty contests.

My worry is, do the parents consider the little girls wants and needs before deciding on their behalf? Some argue that they are too young to decide. That is essentially my point. The fact that they are unable to comprehend the need for beauty shows that they are too immature to take part in beauty contests. For example, children are known to be playful, especially at the ages from three to about ten. These young girls are denied the chance to be whom they are, children. They are forced to take diet meals and suffer through Pixy Stix in the name of energy boost. The question is, if the child would need an energy boost at the age of four, what would she need at fifty?

Mothers claim that it will make their girls strong and be proud of their selves. I still disagree. A four year old is too young to define beauty and ugliness. In fact, the beauty being imposed on this poor child is the opinion of grownups that have been standardized by the previous beauty queens.

For example, a four year old has to undergo through an unethical period of walking around in extremely short skirts, or a translucent dressing the name of beauty. As if this is not enough, the little girls need to wear fake wigs, nails, and spray a dozen of hair sprays in the morning. This child may get both brain damage and lung cancer from these cosmetics by the time she is fifteen! They have to wax the tiny invisible eyebrows, generously smear a lot of facial and body make ups, manicures and pedicures become daily norms and these are crowned up by always wearing partial debentures named “flippers” on their teeth. I feel that it is a great paradox that organizers and parents of these pageants feel that all these give the children confidence. In actual sense, the message passed across is that, “One is not perfect on her own; therefore, she has to augment herself with cosmetics.”

My opinion is, therefore, that four year old girls should not be participating in beauty pageants at all. They should be left to be children and live their lives without the pressure of having to watch what they eat, where they go and afraid of getting a mark on their body when they fall. Parents should be taught that by trying to make your daughter beautiful in the eyes of the world, one is essentially harming her future health. The mothers should not try to fulfill their dreams of becoming runway modeling winners by forcing their daughters to that world at tender ages. Furthermore, the parents spend a lot of money in just one dress, which will not be worn again in most cases. Purchases of the cosmetics have led some mothers to withdraw deep into their children’s college funds in the pretext of looking for a scholarship. The mothers should understand that not everyone can win, and therefore, the risks are too high for the child.