How Banning Child Beauty Pageants Will Protect Childhood

Is it necessary for girls at the age of 6 years and teenagers to compete on their beauty against each other to win financial prizes? Child beauty pageant contests became well known in the 1900s. It started as a celebration to honor beautiful girls and became a $5 billion industry. The most well-known tv shows are Toddlers and Tiaras and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. These competitions concentrate only on body image. It is convincing girls that they can only succeed if they have the perfect appearance regardless of their personalities. Young ladies should be taught well by their parents and society that the perfect look doesn’t define who they really are. It is a social issue that is taking control over young women. Prohibiting child beauty pageants is a must. It is not only sexually objectifying girls at a young age, but it is also vanishing their right to have a normal childhood and it is affecting their physical health in the long term. Therefore, contests like beauty pageants have negative consequences that overshadow their advantages.

Many contestants ended up facing negative consequences. Six years old beauty queen bashed over the head found dead in her house basement, possibly sexually abused, and the killer was never found. The girl is well known for her adultery exposing poses that are inappropriate, and her undeniable sexualized pictures. 

Proven 8/10 10-years old girls in the U.S. have been on a diet. 42 % of first-through third-grade girls want to be thinner.  37% of those girls have already dieted. There are proven studies that some organizations agree about banning child beauty pageants. It will be provided in the following paragraph evidence from different references that agree on my side to support the argument.

First of all, there are proven facts from academic articles, that child beauty pageants are sexually objectifying girls at a young age through many criteria. Media is one of the most sources that is sexualizing young women. It is highlighting females as sexual objects. Indirectly sexualizing young girls. In ads, youngsters usually wear revealing clothes with other adult women posing seductively. These kinds of clothes make it more difficult for girls and others not to focus on their appearance. The message behind those types of ads is to declare to those girls that they should believe their role as females should only concentrate on sex and pleasing others. It is motivating girls to focus on their bodies and think of it as an object decorated to be desired to others. Girls at that age get influenced by any outside source, such media and advertisement provide them information on women’s sexuality that exceeds their level of maturity. As a result, young ladies begin to focus on their appearance and being desired by others and neglecting their own emotions and values. They start believing that to be accepted among the others they should focus on their looks.

In Addition, Beauty contests are demanding little girls to wear revealing outfits such as interpreting Lady Gaga’s clothes in a live contest, use fake breasts and wear bikini suits. In these competitions, they show off sexual dances moves, not proper to their maturity. They are also taught to blow kisses in the air and wink to judges. It is considered as something cute that any child can do. But little do they know. Those girls don’t acknowledge their way of representing themselves is allowing unwanted predators to chase them. Young girls have the right to dress up, dance and feel loved by others. It is normal for them to want to resemble their mothers, older sisters, and others. As they are anxious about being adults and have the right to do everything they want. Nevertheless, these contests are delivering opposite contents for both themselves and the observer. It is teaching them a different aspect of being an adult, which is an ugly truth about which people see women in a sexualized way.