Just saw this post–I didn’t know Oates wrote a book based on JonBenet Ramsey’s murder. I’ll have to check it out soon. Thanks!
One thing that impresses me about beauty pageants being different from other time-intensive commitments like sports and music lessons is that there is really no ultimate gain. A child who takes soccer is forming healthy exercise habits, coordination, muscle-control, and team-work skills. A child who takes piano lessons is increasing her cognitive and artistic abilities. Both children will likely continue to play soccer or piano as an enjoyable activity into adulthood.
Contrast this with beauty pageants. What are these girls learning? You can’t even argue that they are learning anything about modeling or fashion, as the REAL modeling and fashion industries disdain beauty pageants as the lowest of the low kitsch. They are forming “skills” that are worthwhile inside the tiny cultural bubble of beauty pageants, useless to the outside world.
Yeah, yeah. Quote *my *post as the extreme view! Ignore the whole;
where I made the same point as you.
**Maggenkid **did ballet and gym. I had no issue at all with practice, competition or wearing leotards, one of her close friends carried on with gymnastics after **maggenkid **quit and went through to regional competition levels. Her mother pulled her out when the coaches started to pressure the kid and it stopped being fun for her - she’d gained all she wanted for herself and was only carrying on to please other people, not a great lesson. In the pageant world, the *parents *are the coaches and there is a documented trend for a proportion of them to put their own expectations above their kid’s welfare.
Dressing up in adult clothes and putting on adult makeup is fun when you’re a little girl in part because it’s inappropriate! Older people always look like they’re having more fun to a kid. When you give a kid a chance to do something like wearing fancy grown-up clothes or staying up late watching movies and eating popcorn, it seems extra fun and cool because it’s something that is normally denied to them because they’re just a little kid.
When you actually get to be an actual grown-up lady, you find that the grooming and the clothes and the makeup is pretty tiresome. Yeah, there are fun elements to it, but believe me, putting on my lipstick before work every day is nowhere near as much fun as it was to put on my mommy’s lipstick on a Saturday afternoon.
A little girl putting on her mommy’s lipstick is playing.
A little girl putting on her own lipstick isn’t.
Whatever. I participated in pageants when I was little.
I loved it. I loved getting my hair done. I loved wearing makeup. I loved wearing the cute outfits. I loved dancing in front of the people.
I’m perfectly well adjusted. I’ve actually had a MMPI done by a clinical psychologist in order to participate in a research study and I have no diagnosable disorders at all. In fact, the only major issue is that I’m a terrible speller. I’m not sure that can be pinned on pageants though.
Just the same as everything else, some parents are nutty about their children’s activities. Some just want their kids to have fun. I had fun. A lot of fun.
That would be why I said (third time)
and “a proportion” of parents put their own expectations above the kids’ welfare.
Good for you that you’re fine and enjoyed yourself. I’ve never claimed that no kids enjoyed it. I’ve never even claimed that it causes disorders. I do say that when kids are pushed into something they don’t enjoy, by parents who are living vicariously through them (and in some cases - living off their prize money), it probably won’t be “fun” for the kid.
So do I. But it applies to sports, spelling bees, cheerleading, academics and pretty well every other activity that children can do.
I guess the whole ‘pageants are teh horror!!!’ threads get a bit old after a while. Really, it was just good, clean fun. Tough to believe, apparently, but it’s the truth.
The OP wasn’t asking about spelling bees, or sports etc - he asked if most little girls would like to be dressed like Jon-Benet since (to him) it seemed like playing dress-up. I pointed out the differences and even noted that Jon-Benet’s parents were censured by other pageant parents over her costumes.
Please don’t lump my moderate comments as part of a “teh horror” pile-on.
It was good clean fun for you and that’s great - for you.
I saw a similar doco that combined interviews with several of the girls both as 5-6 year olds and as young adult women. Their reactions were split, some had enjoyed it, some felt it had robbed them of a normal childhood. Some wondered where the hell their prizes had gone. They edited in one girl’s grandma admonishing her to do well because “granny wants a new car.”
Again, I’m glad you had a good time, I believe it *was *harmless good fun - for you.
It’s pretty funny to read the disclaimer. Make sure you do. It’s almost like you have free reign to write whatever about whomever as long as you pinkie swear that it’s not based WHATSOEVER on anything that every really happened. It’s an entertaining AND frightening read.
Let’s face facts here–little girls dressing up like hookers and being paraded around in front of adults is just plain creepy. Don’t sexualize your child and then complain about pedophilia. How do you feel about the people who masturbate the the tapes of JonBenet in her beauty pageants?
Two words: Swan Brooner :eek:
VCNJ~
But wouldn’t pedophiles prefer little girls who look like…little girls? Like, based on what I know of pedophiles, they’re attracted to little kids period. Dressing little kids up is creepy, but is it really going to make the kids any more of a target? If anything, wouldn’t it make them less of a target because you are making them look older?
Apparently, not. According to the expose written by the lady who started the whole circuit, she described guys wearing trenchcoats and fake beards sitting in the front row and claiming to be a parent.
Oh, Alice, you are still so pretty.
Yeah, they’re creepy all right. However, one of the creepiest things in the world has got to be Purity Balls.
So, where’s the “Purity Balls” (Heh, the joke potentials for that name are endless.) for boys?
A consistent subset of the dedicated fans of kids’ pageants (and videos series such as the Olsen twins’ enormously profitable ones) are pedophiles, and this is well known in the pageant world. And pedophiles aren’t just people with fetishes for childlike traits – they’re often attracted to children the way people with healthy sexualities are attracted to adults. As with adults, some of them like their partners to dress up fancy sometimes.
Well, certainly creepy, anyway. Watch the film, Little Miss Sunshine sometime–even if the pageants are only half as rigid and controlled etc as the one depicted, that’s still some messed up stuff. I don’t believe in having girls base their self worth on their looks–it makes for very unhappy girls, teens and women.
I know someone who was 3rd place Miss Indiana back in the day. She has told me stories about Vaseline on teeth and duct tape under swim suits. The whole thing sounds insane because it is. She’s very self-deprecating about it all now, but if you say she was 4th or only in the pageant, she will correct you. :rolleyes:
Not according to John Mark Karr.
And add me to the list of people who find whole child beauty pageant world creepy as hell. But what creeps me out is not the little girls getting dressed up, but the lengths to which their mothers will go. In Jonbenet’s case, her mother started dying her hair blond when she was only 3 years old. That in itself is disturbing.
I have seen that movie and as I recall, the director used real pageant contestants doing their real act. I honestly can’t understand what anyone participating in, or watching one of those events gets out of it.