Psychological Problems Associated With the Pageant Lifestyle

A video on ABC news discusses how young the moms are starting their children in pageants and how the pageant life affects them psychologically. The reporter in the video interviewed a pageant mom who started her daughter in pageants when she was one year old.
The video starts with telling us that there is a two week old baby going to compete in the pageant. This to me is just ridiculous. Starting them young is one thing, but when they aren’t even a year old it is just crazy to put them in a pageant. I think a cute baby contest, where they send in photos of their babies, would be a more appropriate for these moms who want to show off their infants.
The video then proceeds to discuss the pressures of winning and how this can have a reverse effect on the girls in these pageants. Some of them have a bad temper and are provoked by the pressures and the rules of competing. This may also turn them into divas. They discuss the costs of these pageants being somewhere around 70,000 dollars and a dress alone could cost 3,000 dollars. Some of the parents get too involved in the pageants and some say they are living through their children. Maybe because they didn’t get to be in beauty pageants when they were younger, now they are forcing their children into them.
When interviewing Terry Real, Founder of Relation Life Institute, he talks about performance based esteem. He says that they think of themselves based on what they look like and what they can do instead of the worth of who you are. This obviously can have ill effects in the future. They could feel like they will get everywhere and anywhere in life with just their looks and also they may think that that is the only thing people will base them on. This can lead to body image issues as well. They may starve themselves to stay skinny and what they see as beautiful. Also in the video was a quote by from the American Psychology Association Task Force that states, “Sexualization of girls is linked to common mental health problems in girls and women…eating disorders, low self – esteem, and depression.” Like I have already discussed, girls who are in pageants at a young age, and who continue to be in pageants, can develop these issues and they may stay with them for a long time. Although girls who are in pageants think highly of themselves in the pageants themselves, this feeling may not parallel their feeling about themselves outside of the pageant world. They may feel like no one takes them seriously, or think they have anything going for themselves except their looks. This can be a very degrading problem and may lead to depression.
When asked about the future problems associated with the pageant life, Mickey, the mother being interviewed, doesn’t seem concerned with these issues. She says that her daughter enjoys being involved in pageants and will let her stop whenever she wants to. This is a good attitude to have toward pageants as some parents force their daughters into the pageants and are too involved in the pageants, making these issues more prominent in the daughters’ lives.

The Pain Of Pageants

How much pain and discomfort are these parents of the daughters in Toddlers and Tiaras willing to put them through to make them look “presentable” to the judges? Some of the things that I have seen, says a lot. From making their daughters wear corsets, to waxing their eyebrows, these parents really put the looks of their children over their well – being.
On the only episode I watched of this show, I saw a mother getting her daughter spray tanned and having her eyebrows touched up by what they told her felt like having cardboard rubbed over your face. It wasn’t supposed to hurt but something went awry and the little girl almost started crying. It was almost like she felt like she shouldn’t or even couldn’t cry, because her mother would frown on that sort of behavior. It seems like these mothers will do anything to make their daughters look good and tell them the same thing. That beauty is pain. This is teaching the girls a bad lesson; you don’t have to do things that hurt you to look good.
In US Weekly magazine, the headline is, “Toddlers and Tiaras Forces Daughter to Get Highlights.” The highlights that were given were “peroxide provided blonde ones.” The daughter clearly did not want to go through with it and told her mother that she didn’t want to and that she wanted to keep her natural hair color. Her mother tried to distract her daughter by asking her about her friends but Carley just told her she didn’t have any friends. This had negative effects when Carley ripped off her fake eyelashes on stage, which her mother was not at all happy about and scolded her daughter about after the pageant. This shows that the girls who do not want to have these unpleasant things done to them, they take it out on their mothers. The children reluctantly do what their mothers tell them will win them pageants, even if this means that it causes them pain or discomfort. I also don’t think that it is healthy to start having your daughter’s hair highlighted at such a young age. People say that dyeing your hair can have negative affects, especially when doing it often.
In another article in US Weekly magazine titled, “Toddlers and Tiaras Mom Makes Daughter Wear Corset” Marlo, mother of 11 year old Sydney, puts her into a tightly – bound corset. Her mother is quoted saying, “It doesn’t matter if you can breathe or not! It only matters if you look beautiful!” This obviously is not putting her daughter’s best interest to heart. This is something that has not been around for a very long time because it was a crazy thing that women did to make themselves look thinner. It was very uncomfortable and even made some women faint from not being able to breathe. Doing this to an 11 year old for a pageant is just ridiculous. This shows that pageant mom’s will go to great lengths to have their daughters looking “pageant perfect.”
Along the same lines as the eyebrow touch – up, momotics.com posts about a scene put up from the show on this site of a young girl getting her eyebrows waxed. Watching this just made me cringe. The little girl was crying and saying she didn’t want to have it done, but her mother was persistent and even tried to bribe her with candy. They said that during a different waxing, the wax was too hot and it ripped off her skin, and she is scared to have them done again. The mother says after she is done that normally she would have held her daughter down and ripped them off herself which is just an unbelievable thing to watch.

Another Controversial Outfit

After my last blog about the 3 year old dressing up like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman as a hooker, I looked at another article involving a similar case. This article titled, “Pedophiles Delight? ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’ Star, 4, Dons Fake Boobs, Butt” describes a mother who dressed her daughter as Dolly Parton complete with the fake C – cup breasts and the butt to be as realistic as possible.
Just like the other mother who dressed her daughter as a hooker thought that having her daughter wear this outfit was funny and nothing more. Along with the fake boobs and butt, she was wearing a tight hot pink catsuit as well. Some critics of the show have been asking on Twitter, “Is this child abuse?” while another says, “Hope for the future…fading…,”. A person on Facebook posts, “"OH MY GOD!!!! THEY ARE MONTSERS!!!! THOSE PARENTS ARE MONSTERS!!!!" I think that in a way these people are right about the mothers and fathers who throw their kids into these pageants. I feel that these parents are giving the kids the wrong idea about life when they grow up. They are making these children think that the only thing that will get you places in the future is your looks. They are also giving them unrealistic expectations of what they should look like when they are older. By having her daughter fake boobs and a butt, Lindsay Jackson is making her daughter believe that having big boobs and butt is the most important thing in life and it doesn’t matter if you’re smart if you have these qualities, you will be successful.
Diane Levin, an author of a book called, “So Sexy So Soon: The Next Sexualized Childhood and How Parents Can Protect Their Kids" discusses the implications of Jackson’s decision for her daughter, Maddy’s outfit. She says, “The girl clearly sees being pretty as pretty in a sexy way, like a grown up woman.” This shows that the girls see themselves as grown up when they are only 4 years old. There is something wrong with teaching their kids that they only way to be pretty is to be sexy. Leven goes on to say, “While a 4-year-old wearing fake breasts is an extreme version of this type of objectification, this sexiness begins to normalize the expectation of little girls' appearances,” The girls begin to believe that every other girl is the same way as them and that there aren’t people who look different. This could make a hard transition to young adulthood. Understanding that not every girl dresses up and wears make – up at a young is a basic concept that they may have a very hard time dealing with.
The article like the prostitute outfit article also says that “the show has also been criticized as potential fodder for pedophiles.” The show’s Facebook page shows comments about the parents being child molesters putting their daughters in these provocative outfits objectifying them for the pedophiles. They mainly put the blame on the parents in these situations.

Hooker Outfit: Not Funny

One of the recent controversies I have heard about on the show “Toddlers in Tiaras” is about a mother dressing her daughter up as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman; she dressed her 3 year old daughter as hooker. She had the thigh high boots and a tight mini skirt and a top that showed a lot of skin.
I read an article on ABC news.com titled: “Tot Dressed as Prostitute: ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’ Blasted for Airing Image of 3-Y-O Pageant Contestant in Racy Costume” where they discussed the most controversial outfit on the show so far. The other mothers who dress their daughters up in outrageous costumes every week are angry that Wendy Dickey, mother the daughter dressed as prostitute, is bringing more controversy to the show. The article quotes another mother saying, “Us pageant moms already take a huge rap for what we’re doing with our little girls and it’s outfits like that that give us a bad rap” Dickey doesn’t agree with the other mothers and justifies this costume by saying that the costume was meant to be funny. In an interview by Good Morning America Dickey said, “The whole idea was for people to see the comedy behind it. It’s like when you take your children to a kids’ movie, there’s always adult humor that the parents get that the children don’t get and that’s what it was about.” This idea may be true but the jokes for adults in movies are not teaching the children in the theater that dressing like a hooker is acceptable. It is also not like the situations in the movie are anything like the situation Dickey is putting her child in.
The article goes on to discuss the issue of pedophiles and Dickey’s take on this topic. Although she realizes that there are pedophiles everywhere in everyday life, she doesn’t believe that they are present at these types of pageants. It is unbelievable how naïve Dickey is to think that pedophiles do not go to pageants to see little girls dressed up in skimpy outfits. She is quoted saying, “When you take your children to the beach you put swimsuits on your girls, bikinis on your little ones or your big ones or teenagers,” she said. “I think there are just as many or more pedophiles at the beach and in the park and anywhere ... I do not believe pageants are a breeding ground for pedophiles.” To compare wearing a bikini at the beach to a hooker outfit in a toddler beauty pageant is outrageous. For one thing, a bikini is acceptable in our society; there are not sexual connotations for young girls wearing an ordinary swimsuit. Swimming involves showing parts of your body in your swimsuit. There is however, a problem with a child wearing a hooker costume at a beauty pageant. This sends negative connotations and makes the rest of society wonder how the mother of this child could let them walk around this way.
If Dickey doesn’t think how she and other mothers dress their daughters is suggestive and sexualizing them, she is greatly mistaken. The mothers are condoning maturity and sexuality these toddlers could not possibly understand or need to understand at their young age. The mothers, whether they realize it or not, are sexualizing their daughters way too young.