When evaluating whether or not a parent wishes to allow their child to compete or continue to compete in beauty pageants, these risks should be highly considered. It’s important to remember that for the one girl who’s excelling in college interviews because of her success in child pageants, another, not as successful, is throwing up her lunch in the school bathroom every day.

The young contestants are at risk to grow up to dislike their bodies, are put through acts that danger their physical health, and are objectified to the point where their safety is of great concern. It’s time to dig beneath the surface, and raise our children with the notion that beauty does not define your character or the person you seek to become.

This exploitation can also lead to high exposure to sexual predators.

JonBenet Ramsey, a 5 year old child beauty pageant star, was murdered in 1995. She became popularized through videos of her competing in pageants shown on Fox News Network. In 2006, police finally arrested a suspect. Whether or not he actually committed the crime, he admitted to the murder stating that the way he knew of her and was interested in her was because of her public exploitation (Reed). Watch as JonBenet’s father speaks out against his daughter’s pageant involvement.

You can compare the display of Ramsey’s pageantry to shows like Toddlers and Tiaras. The way Ramsey was murdered from public attraction can happen again in the same manner because these reality TV shows exist. The young contestants in high glitz pageants are forced to dress in revealing and scandalous outfits, not fit at all for their age. The girls perform talent skits where they show off extremely sexual dance moves, not at all appropriate for their level of maturity. Take a look at what TLC calls the most “outrageous” outfits of the season. Maybe a better description would be completely and utterly inappropriate.

The outfits and performances combined attract a great deal of attention to the young girls from unwanted predators. The psychological effects aside, the pure safety risks pageants pose on young girls should be enough to convince any parent to resist participation in pageants.

Not only is the physiological state of the young girls effected, but the girls’ physical bodies themselves are harmed from what the mothers are spending the money on. One of the reasons parents aren’t as keen to the negative effects of beauty pageants, Cartwright writes, is because they cannot differentiate between their needs and their child’s needs. The potential benefit or gain to the parents leads to the abuse of their child (Cartwright).

According to the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act, child abuse is “the physical or mental injury, sexual abuse or exploitation, of a child under circumstances which indicate the child’s health or welfare is threatened or harmed” (Nussbaum). The types of preparation it takes for a full-glitz pageant include beauty enhancements such as full makeup, false eyelashes, spray tans, hair extensions, fake nails, waxing, and many more. These are all painful processes. Examples of this abuse can be shown below, where a mother gives her 8-year-old daughter Botox for “wrinkles” that her daughter somehow believed she had.

Watch as another mother puts her daughter through unnecessary waxing of her eyebrows. The daughter clearly does not want this process to be done as in the past, she has been seriously injured because of it.

Whereas a grown adult may be able to handle the pain and chemicals received from these beauty additives, a young child cannot and should not have to endure them. To complete all of their preparations, days start in the wee hours of daylight and end after crowning has finished late at night. Cartwright speaks of how the young girls skip their much-needed naps to prepare for pageants, because the parents and coaches don’t want their hair, dresses, and makeup to be spoiled (Cartwright). I am 19 years old and if I don’t get a nap, I still get cranky. Imagine the attitude and hissy fits that can come out of these kids from not getting the much needed sleep they need. There are countless clips online of TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras showing young girls over-tired, frustrated, and unhappy at the pageants.

Some moms even attempt to keep their daughters awake using sugar and caffeine, also known as “pageant crack”. Cartwright brings to attention how this is a dietitians worst nightmare (Cartwright).

It’s important to recognize that abuse is not always as clear as a simple slap in the face, but the exploitation of these children is extremely harmful to their bodies.

When you say the confidence helps the young girls pursue a career, you are forgetting the focus of the pageants: beauty.

This harsh environment the girls are being put into put them at risk for future bodily dissatisfaction. A study conducted by Wonderlich et al. reveals

“Of the 131 females who participated in beauty pageant contests, 48% reported a desire to be thinner, 57% stated they were trying to lose weight, and 26% had been told or were believed to have an eating disorder” (Dante).

None of those statistics sound like the girls are growing up to be very confident in themselves. These issues stem from the beauty-centered environment of the pageants. Contestants, as young as 6 months old, are judged on personality, yet never say a word within the pageant itself. If they don’t win, they are then reprimanded for poor performance, lack of enthusiasm, and flawed appearances. We should be raising our girls to be confident in their personalities, standards, and morals, not completely based off their beauty traits, which is what they are being judged on.

According to Martina M. Cartwright Ph.D., a registered dietitian and adjunct professor in the University of Arizona’s department of nutritional sciences,

“Some hypercritical parents chastised their tots for not ‘performing’ or looking less than perfect, openly blaming the child for ‘failure’ and insisting that the child would practice more or ‘learn to look perfect’” (Cartwright).

The young girls grow up to have a skewed view of what “beauty” should be. Children as young as 5 begin to have an image in their head of what perfection is meant to look like. Cartwright states that many believe that the keys to success are found from “physical beauty and superficial charm”, due to “intense participation in activities that spotlight physical appearance” (Cartwright). Because of the concentration on beauty, according to Dante, the pageant contestants are given the perception that in order to have a successful life, one needs to be tall, thin and conventionally beautiful (Dante). There is little to no focus on other traits that help one gain a successful career. Fellow blogger, Mark Bello, argues that if this perception is not what they believe, the girls’ self-worth dramatically decreases (Bello).

The instillation of these high standards at such a young age is extremely detrimental to the satisfaction and confidence of the girls’ bodies over time, putting them at risk for developing an eating disorder. Surely parents need to consider these detrimental effects.

N.d. France Bans Child Beauty Pageants. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.

On the surface, there are many potential benefits to child beauty pageants, but with a closer look, the positives quickly become overshadowed by the negatives. One may think the prizes won at a pageant can help a family out financially. It’s true that the money won can be put towards a child’s future college education, but with a further examination it is clear that this is not the case. According to Martina M. Cartwright Ph.D., a registered dietitian and adjunct professor in the University of Arizona’s department of nutritional sciences, a single glitz pageant can run up to $3,000 to $5,000 (Nauert). The amount of girls who end up winning a significant monetary value is slim. The money spent on pageants outweighs the money gained.

In addition, the boost in confidence that is so-called received from pageants quickly changes to a “bragging” type attitude. Frequent winners become over-confident and those not as successful believe there is something “wrong” with them. One would think the contestants would learn the practices of good sportsmanship, but in reality pageant parents and coaches instill the idea in their heads that “nobody is their friend here”. Grosaru believes the atmosphere that is all smiles and hugs on the outside leads to paranoid features (Grosaru). On top of that, the great social skills the contestants potentially gain are transformed to surface level. The young girls watch their mothers bicker, argue, and even get kicked out of establishments because of their lack of social respect. The role models they are looking up to are teaching girls to pit themselves against each other. Besides these clear counters to the arguments in defense of child beauty pageants there are many other reasons why parents should reconsider their childs’ involvement.

N.d. The Truth About Child Beauty Pageants. Web. 27 Apr. 2016.

Hair extensions, false eyelashes, fake tans, and revealing outfits: for a 20 year old off to the club… suitable, for an 8 year old at a beauty pageant… maybe not.

The environment: screaming parents, the food: full of sugar, and the focus: all on beauty.

Although the media may exaggerate the reality of child beauty pageants, there is a lot of truth to the unbelievable actions of the parents and children that are being shown. Pageants are shown to cause bodily dissatisfaction, pose health risks, and create high exposure to sexual predators. When pageants are taken to the next level, the positives do not shine in comparison to the potential psychological effects.