Emotional Effects of Child Beauty Pageants, Essay Example

Introduction

Pushing children into beauty pageants has become a popular means of promoting child’s beauty, popularity, and fame. Hundreds of children participate in various pageant contests and competitions, seeking recognition and reward. Wearing lipstick, adult clothes, and playing on the stage –all these seem to be nothing but fun. In reality, however, by pushing children into pageants their parents act against their normal development. It appears that although beauty pageants teach children discipline, independence, individuality and confidence, they also produce irreversible negative emotional effects, by showing children as a commodity, leaving no place to innocence, and leading to the development of eating disorders and depression later in life.

With the development of the new pageantry culture in America, children became its primary subjects and slaves. Parents are doing everything possible and impossible to make their children popular and recognized, while children do not realize the seriousness and the effects, which their participation in beauty pageants may produce on their emotional state. It is difficult to deny that beauty pageants do change children’s lives to the better in a sense that children become more independent, more confident, and more public. They become more communicative and can sometimes take serious decisions. “Many parents cite empowerment as the major reason for allowing their children to participate in child pageants since the child is able to build on qualities such as poise, individuality, confidence, public-speaking, interview skills, and learning how to interact socially and make friends” (Charles). Moreover, in the process of becoming beautiful famous, children may come closer to their parents and develop stronger interpersonal relationships with them (Seale 42). Even if participation in beauty pageants does not always result in better relationships between children and parents, in families which promote close communication between family members and emphasize the relevance of common activities, children have more chances to develop and preserve stronger family bonds with their parents (Seale 44). Children feel empowered and respected.

Unfortunately, child pageants tend to erase the boundary between empowerment and sexualization (Charles). Parents do not always realize the pressures, which beauty pageants place on their children. Moreover, they do not want to look behind the curtains and to see that there is a whole range of other leisure activities, including sports and reading, which can improve their relationships with children without making them victims of the stage. Compared to inconsiderably positive emotional effects which child pageants produce on children, they simultaneously create a misbalanced emotional atmosphere: children are viewed as commodities, they can no longer be innocent, and later in life they are more likely to experience depression and various kinds of eating disorders.

Beauty pageants represent a form of a competition, in which the best and the most beautiful wins. For this reason, push their children into beauty pageants because they believe that such participation and public activity will teach children deal with competition (Charles). Really, in their lives, competition and their ability to deal with it will predetermine their chances to become successful in career and personal life. More importantly, a child who can accept a failure and to analyze its reasons will be more likely to become a success in any area of professional or individual performance. In reality, these (as expected) positive effects are largely erased or zeroed under the impact of negative feelings, which children experience during the competition. First of all, many of them have difficulties when trying to get used to their new appearance: that children do not recognize themselves when looking into the mirror creates a conflict between their appearance and their mentality (Seale 56). Second, beauty pageants show children as commodities, which do not leave any place for true childhood innocence (Giroux 32; Seale 57).

In her book, Seale writes that “an increase of interest in childhood as a stage of life has led to a considerable amount of packaging, staging, surveillance and commodification, development in the early years of life being closely scrutinized for signs of deviation” (102). In this context, media are playing one of the primary roles, promoting an “appropriate” image of a child and showing how children must develop and perform in their early years. The child, who is far from being mature and who is still searching for his own childhood identity, becomes a victim of commercial exploitation: beauty pageants impose the image and behaviors which are not characteristic of children (Giroux 37). Beauty pageants make children accept these behaviors and images for the sake of winning the contest. Because media show beauty pageants as a normal course of childhood development, and because media position beauty pageants as useful for the development of specific personal features in the child (Seale 103), parents become obsessive about pushing their children in beauty pageants and making them popular. In reality, a beauty pageant is just another form of deviant behavior during childhood (Seale 104). Parent desires to make their children participate in beauty pageants are also considered pathological (Seale 104). Children become a kind of a commodity, which is modified according to specific beauty standards, and these standards do not always coincide with the principles and standards, which children want to follow. By pushing their children into beauty pageants, parents “are doing no more than taking the commodification of childhood to its logical conclusion, constructing children as miniature adults in a peculiarly extreme version of the general orientation towards seeing children as harbingers of their future selves” (Seale 106). Children no longer belong to themselves; they belong to their parents and experience an increasing discomfort at the need to be public and recognized.

While beauty pageants show children as a kind of commodity, and where beauty pageants erase the boundary between childhood and adulthood, they also create an atmosphere, in which innocence (simple childhood innocence) does not fit. Society fights against the major childhood threats, including sexual abuse and violence, but this society also forgets that many of the current threats to childhood lie beyond the limits of physical violence (Giroux 39). Children are expected to grow and participate in environments, in which they are the critical agents, and in which they can exert some kind of influence on their decisions and actions (Giroux 39). In this way, they learn to govern their lives and to be independent. Beauty pageants are the public spectacles, which parents use to project their unrealized dreams on children, but do children want to realize these dreams? No one ever seeks their agreement, and such projections also show how distorted adult fantasies deny children’s identities suitable for their age (Seale 107). Beauty pageants do not allow children to be children. Beauty pageants remake children to satisfy parent desires and pleasures (Giroux 40). Through beauty pageants, parents subject their children to some kind of tyrannical power, and seem unwilling to accept their children without poise and make up.

That innocence “humanizes the child and makes a claim on adults to provide them with security and protection” (Giroux 41) also means that children who participate in beauty pageants and who lack this sense of innocence will not feel secure in their further strivings. In their early years children are still unprepared to learn different world realities, including discrimination, sexism, and violence. They are not prepared to be adults. Also, they are not prepared to accept the standards of beauty which they may not be able to follow later in life. They get used to the thought that being beautiful and being a queen is everything they need to be successful. In light of these misconceptions and distorted beliefs, many young ladies who used to participate in beauty pageants, later develop depressive symptoms and experience different eating disorders (Wonderlish & Ackard 291). Also, they have a higher probability of body dissatisfaction and interpersonal distrust (Wonderlish & Ackard 291). As a result, children who are pushed in beauty pageants may have serious difficulties when trying to identify themselves with their appearance, with their roles and obligations, and with their roles in society.

According to Wonderlish and Ackard, “women who participated in childhood beauty pageants scored significantly higher on measures of body dissatisfaction, interpersonal distrust, and impulse dysregulation than women who did not participate in childhood beauty pageants” (293). That means that, on the one hand, emotional effects of beauty pageants are serious and multifaceted and on the other hand, that such effects also tend to be long-term. The fact that participation in beauty pageants is associated with high level of media exposure can partially explain these effects. In simpler terms, children who participate in beauty pageants must keep to thin body ideals. Later in life, and being unable to follow these standards, young women become dissatisfied with what they often see in the mirror.

Because children who participate in beauty pageants must follow the norms of thinness by any means possible they can either develop the symptoms of eating disorders, or can also experience a kind of mistrust toward their friends, peers, and the rest of society (Wonderlish & Ackard 295). By comparing themselves to others who look more beautiful and more in accordance with specific standards of beauty, girls and young women develop a feeling of insecurity, due to the fact that they believe they do not represent the beauty ideal (Wonderlish & Ackard 296). Trying to follow these standards and failing to achieve them, girls and women become angry and depressed. They lack impulse control and are more likely to project these negative behaviors on their own children (Wonderlish & Ackard 296).

Those who used to participate in child beauty pageants also experience a feeling of being ineffective (Wonderlish & Ackard 297). Exposed to publicity and influenced by the media, girls see thinness as the measure of their effectiveness and success, and if ineffective, they also experience body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. What seems more serious and more threatening is that under the emotional impact of child beauty pageants, girls and young women develop bulimic behaviors and low self-esteem (Wonderlish & Ackard 297). These symptoms and behaviors become even more acute if influenced by family members and peers. Thus, when parents push their children into beauty pageants, and when parents emphasize the role which such participation may play in children’s development and professional success, children will be more susceptible to the risks of bulimia and low self-esteem. However, the feelings and perceptions of pageant participants may depend on what meaning parents ascribe to their participation in beauty pageants. It appears that parents can view beauty pageants as some form of enjoyment and entertainment, and in this case children do not experience any significant pressures and do not experience any negative consequences of such participation (Seale 105). Also, parents can view beauty pageants as the means for a girl to develop better etiquette and specific life values. If that is the case, parents will exert enormous pressure on girls in their striving to comply with thin ideals (Seale 105). In such situation, girls may use disordered eating as an instrument to preserve their thinness and ideal appearance. Although beauty pageants may lead to improved confidence, competitive skills, independence, autonomy, and decision-making, the negative emotional effects on children are much more significant. If taken too seriously, beauty pageants do not lead to anything but body dissatisfaction, eating disorders, and continuous depression.

Conclusion

Beauty pageants present children with a unique opportunity to show themselves as beautiful and ideal. By participating in pageants, children have a chance to feel a part of a glamorous world associated with fame and recognition. Those who support children’s participation in beauty pageants view them as the means to develop unique features from independent decision-making to etiquette skills and life values. Unfortunately, the negative effects of beauty pageants on children are much more significant. Children who participate in beauty pageants are more likely to have depression, eating disorders, and to experience body dissatisfaction. Children, who are imposed inappropriate standards of beauty, will experience difficulties when trying to identify themselves with their appearance. Such children are often the victims of their parents’ unrealized dreams, and later in adulthood they will tend to project their anger and dissatisfaction on their own children.

Works Cited

Charles. J. “Exploring Child Beauty Pageants.” 2009. Guardian, 19 September 2009. http://guardian.co.tt/features/life/2009/05/28/exploring-child-beauty-pageants

Giroux, H. “Child Beauty Pageants and the Politics of Innocence.” Social Text, vol. 16, no. 4 (1998), p. 31-53.

Seale, C. Media and Health. SAGE, 2002.

Wonderlish, A.L. and D.M. Ackard. “Childhood Beauty Pageant Contestants: Associations with Adult Disordered Eating and Mental Health.” Eating Disorders, vol. 13 (2005), p. 291-301.