Glad we got that cleared up.
I watched that marathon this weekend for a bit and really didn’t see too many crazy parents. All the little girls I saw seemed to love doing it, and I really liked the one girl that wasn’t your typical beauty pageant girl, she was the one that did karate for her “Wow” bit. I must have caught the nice episodes, I’m not seeing the outrage.
I will say that I can’t freaking stand that stupid way they teach them to walk. Instantly makes a cute girl look like a little brat.
I agree with you. As you said, I don’t really see the difference between these parents and any parent who pushes their child beyond the realms of normal boundaries be it sports or education or acting or music etc.
I also find it weird there’s some sort of leap to this show being pedophile gold. Do you castigate parents who take their children to the playground?
Well, I think the ones pushing them in sports well past what is healthy or what the kid wants are bad parents. But also there is undeniably a sexual element…
Look at the kind of parent who does this to their kid:
I mean in general, a teen–even a young one–wearing a lot of make up or experimenting with a more revealing wardrobe, while not always the best idea, is part of growing up, IMHO. I mean, not that all kids have to go through such a phase, but I don’t think it’s inherently a bad thing. But what earthly reason is there to put this much lipstick and mascara and rouge on a child? They look like stand ins for the Real Housewives of Orange County.
I don’t really see those pictures as having a sexual element, though. They’re monumentally tacky, that’s for sure but from what little I’ve seen of the show, the moms are all truly lacking in the taste factor (Michael Kors would have a field day) so of course, their kids are going to be vulgar looking, as well. That said, kids might wear even less during a gymnastics competition or something even tackier during an ice skating event but I don’t see the type of moralizing for those particular activities that I see for this show.
Additionally, this isn’t what these kids are wearing 24/7. I’m going to take a wild guess and say they’re dressed like “normal” kids most of the time. These are specific looks for a specific event and again, have you seen ever seen a beauty pageant? The taste chipset simply isn’t there.
Beyond that though, I just think it’s silly to get hysterical about this show because a pedophile might be drawn to it. I’m sure pedophiles have been around long before beauty pageants and they’ll be around even if beauty pageants go the way of the dodo. To make some sort of connection between the two is fear-mongering. I am, however, with anyone who wants get outraged about the large amounts of lame and hair spray used.
A good friend of mine in college was a former child beauty queen, and the experience sure didn’t help her body image issues – or her relationship with her mother. She once said “Some of my earliest memories are about people judging me based on the way I looked.” I don’t think it’s a great idea to push young children too hard in other spheres either, but it strikes me as at least somewhat less twisted to focus on skills rather than looks. And at least when it comes to sports, music, etc., the child will someday be able to walk away if they want to. If you don’t like being judged based on your violin-playing ability, you can quit the violin and do something else. But while it’s possible to quit the pageant circuit you can’t really cut yourself off from your own appearance in the same way.
I’m sure a lot of pageant mothers would say they are preparing their daughters for reality – they’re going to be judged on their looks throughout their lives whether they like it or not. But placing such huge emphasis on beauty so early on doesn’t seem likely to produce happy or well rounded young women, and is even less likely to produce happy older women. If your chief asset is your looks, it must be very difficult when they start to fade and you’ve got little else to fall back on.
I was a little child super athlete and I can tell you I have all kinds of problems associated with it. Just on a totally literal level, my foot bones got so messed up from all the training I did, that I ended up breaking my foot every single year of high school that I was on the tennis team. Even now, I can’t run on a treadmill or outside, because my foot breaks (I can do lower impact stuff though).
So, while certainly it’s not the same thing these girls are facing, the fact is that there are all kinds of problems with pushing your kids severely into anything. Look at the gymnasts who don’t get the periods or are like, 4’9’’- stunted bc of all the gymnastics they did.
The sexuality is inherent in make-up for women. Lipstick for red, pouty, sexually receptive lips (you could argue that lips with lipstick on them are to imitate engorged labia), eye shadow and mascara to make your eyes look wider and your pupils dilated as in sexual arousal. I don’t know about blush - maybe it is to simulate a flush of arousal. Then there’s the whole idea behind women wearing make-up in the first place - to attract the interest of men.
The pedophilia thing seems to be a widespread perception, based on the South Park episode where we see the male judges at a kiddie pageant vigorously masturbating. And at the time I found myself thinking . . . Suppose it had been male judges publicly masturbating at a conventional beauty contest with adult women? Would that be funny? Could be, depends how they play it, but it would be a different joke, because viewing beautiful women as sex objects is presumptively normal (whatever feminists might say). The premise here is that kiddie-pageants sexualize little girls, that is not normal, therefore men who will respond to all that as intended (and who else would judge such a pageant?) are perverts by definition, and perverts will do anything, like masturbating in public. Or something.
I can’t really imagine them making that kind of joke at a normal beauty pageant. When I think of men at a beauty pageant, I usually assume gay or into costumery. I guess I figure, why would a totally sexed up guy go into pageantry–if he really wants to see hot women, in this day and age, wouldn’t porn be simpler?
This is hardly a new problem though. This goes back before Vaudeville. Remember it was the parents of the Gumm Sisters that pushed the toddlers on to the stage, before one bacame Judy Garland.
George “Spanky” McFarland and others supported their folks through the depression.
And of course there was the Jackie Coogan Law, in response to parents exploiting their kids.
And even when they don’t do it for publicity, I’ve known mothers that treat their babies like Ken and Barbie. I mean what baby needs six pairs of shoes he’s gonna outgrow in 2 months?
I’m not saying it’s OK, but it’s not a new thing
I honestly don’t know how to respond to this other than to say I think you’ve got a very skewed perspective on things. Oh and…
Lipstick on lips = Engorged Labia. Thanks for clearing that up.:rolleyes:
We’re going to agree to disagree here. I think you’re going to see unhappiness whenever a parent pushes a child to hard in a particular activity.
Look, I think beauty pageants are lame. I think I’ve seen about 5 minutes of the show under discussion and I think it’s lame too. I read the thread because I’ve read some other comments about the show on the internets and was interested in seeing the reaction here and quite frankly, I find the self-righteousness in this thread lame, as well. I’m sure people will disagree with me. Chacun a son gout.
I didn’t see the show in question. However:
–Every psychosexual critique made about it on this thread can apply just as easily to Little League Baseball or Pee Wee Football. Where’s the outrage? While it’s distasteful that a lot of mothers of young girls are a little too into playing “dress-up doll” with them, I find it less brutal than football dads.
–More than a little of this outrage at least looks like regional snobbery. Children’s beauty contests are huge in the south and southwest, and even more so in Latin America (esp. Colombia, Brazil and Argentina). What are you really so pissed off about?
Little girls want the same kind of validation as everybody else, for all the same reasons. I’m a little suspicious of anybody’s motivations for wanting to take this one away.
Well, I don’t know if I believe that labia=engorged lips. But you don’t see wearing make up as something that’s somewhat sexualized? When a woman wants to look sexy (in the stereotyped, etc. way), the best way to do so is by wearing something tight and with a lot of cosmetics. I mean, you don’t think an 8 year old with a huge amount of mascara, bright red lipstick, blush, and dark eyeliner on is inappropriate? A woman dressing that way is definitely trying to be sexy–on an 8 year old child, it’s not sexy, but it does feel wrong.
I’m the last, “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” type, but I feel uncomfortable seeing it. The JonBenet Ramsey photo I linked to didn’t show all that much, no–she’d probably wear less at the beach. But the idea of tarting your 6 year old daughter up in a chorus girl outfit with heels and feathers and lipstick doesn’t sit right with me. If she were wearing absolutely nothing–no make up, costume, anything–it would less sexual to me. Because then she’d just be a normal little girl. The way she was in that picture…with the tight top, the heels…it just felt like they were trying to call attention to her in a bad way. Like when a grown woman wants to be sexy she doesn’t go around totally naked (usually) but what she does wear draws attention to what is there–i.e., a tight short skirt being really sexual despite the fact that it might be less revealing than what she’d wear at the beach, for example.
Uh, that’s not a disagreement. I’m not in favor of pushing children too hard in any activity. I just think doing so with beauty pageants is creepier than with most other endeavors. That’s why I said “I don’t think it’s a great idea to push young children too hard in other spheres either, but it strikes me as at least somewhat less twisted to focus on skills rather than looks.”
Oh, FWIW my former child beauty queen friend said that she felt things had changed a lot since she was competing in the 1980s. She said she’d been rather shocked when she saw all the JonBenet Ramsey photos in the media because in her day the ideal had been more a Shirley Temple-esque cutesy little girl look and not “tiny hooker”.
It probably varies regionally and even from pageant to pageant though, so I don’t know if things really changed that much in a few years or if my friend had just been competing in less “glitzy” pageants.
Eh, make-up is the human version of plumage and mating displays. It is inappropriate on non-sexual underage children, in my opinion. You’re free to disagree, and tart your children up any way you see fit.
I do think that make-up can and is used to up the sexiness quotient. I just disagree with what Cat Whisperer said that “sexuality is inherent in make-up for women.” You know, my eyes are really deep-set and I sometimes wear eye shadow to bring them out a bit. I don’t do it to let men know that I’m on the prowl, I do it because I look more attractive and that makes me feel good. Now, that could very well mean I’m shallow and have read too many issues of Vogue but I’ll live with that.
And I also digress, no I don’t think make-up is appropriate for children. They look ridiculous with it on but I don’t think the mothers on the show are trying to sexualize their children. What they’re trying to do is make their kid stand out from the herd. You see this in sporting events when someone tries a very difficult maneuver. You see this when a musician plays a particularly difficult piece. How would you do this in a beauty contest? Brighter colors, bigger hair, more sparkles etc.
If I saw a child wearing makeup and a chorus girl outfit out and about in normal everyday life, I would think there was something really strange going on. At a beauty pageant, I think it’s just because the fire marshall told the moms they couldn’t set the batons on fire. I’m not saying the contestants’s parents aren’t guilty of poor taste just that as with most things, context is everything.
The women all claim it is the kids idea. bullsjhit. A 3 year old does not suddenly say I want to compete in beauty contests. it is the mother living through the kids life. it is sick. The moms are doing the whole act while the kid does it on stage.
Marge Flanders, is that you?
Sorry, I disagree with your thoughts on make-up. And just because I disagree with you does not mean I think make-up is appropriate on young children nor does it mean I would go “tarting” up my (non-existent) children. Thanks for playing. Next specious argument?