This image shows a girl as a contestant in a beauty pageant. The girls that compete in these pageants are often very young. Parents can make their children compete in pageants since they are able to sit up on their own. A lot of people take beauty pageants as a hobby, like it should be. However, many other people take beauty pageants very seriously and make it their “career”. The whole idea of having beauty pageants is a joke, it is a way of society fighting to keep the beauty standard stereotypes going.

Beauty pageants are very controversial because of numerous factors. First of all, parents who take them too seriously a lot of times force their girls to not have a normal childhood. These girls have to go through extensive sessions of getting their makeup done, their nails done, their hair done with extensions, and body tanning. Since very little, these girls discovered the “standards of beauty” placed by society. Girls are supposed to look cute, but these pageants make them look like 20-year-old women.

The sad part is that children need to be children and enjoy their childhood by napping, running around, and getting messy. However, a lot of the normal childhood aspects are banned to the girls who compete in beauty pageants as a career. A lot of parents give their kids excessive amount of candy and caffeine to keep them up and active.

Are beauty pageant even a tiny bit positive? In my opinion they’re not. Even though the pictures show “beautiful” girls smiling, I believe that most of the girls aren’t happy. It is fun for a young girl to play dress up and wear makeup and high heels every once in a while, but doing that as a profession and getting judged isn’t fun. What about when they get criticized? Their self-esteem decreases, and they try even harder to look “beautiful” changing the natural way a kid should look.

Does society really want young girls to look like 20-year-old women? Isn’t society supposed to be getting rid of beauty standards and accepting people the way they are naturally? Girls in beauty pageants rarely get a choice in whether they want to participate or not; it’s mostly up to the parents. Is that what parents really want for their kids? To throw away their childhood and replace it by makeup and high heels?