The Beasts of Beauty Pageants

Beauty Pageants have been popular for centuries in many parts of the world and have
become the root of societys delusional portrayal of beauty. Every females dream is to have a life
of fascinating hair and cosmetics, beautiful gowns and sparkling tiaras, but these dreams often
turn into nightmares. There are nearly seven hundred thousand beauty contests held and seen as a
huge industry in the United States alone every year. However, with the trend of beauty contests
expanding around the globe, lots of people have started to voice up against women, especially
for young children, being exposed. Controversies over beauty pageants as to whether they have
positive or negative effects on females increase as time passes. Although beauty contests seem
harmless and even beneficial, they continue to cause a detrimental impact on a females
perception of self-worth in reality.
A beauty pageant is a competition in which people judge a group of females and decide
who the beauty queen is. It was started by a hotel owner in Atlantic City in the 1920s, who
introduced pageantry to entice summer tourists to stay longer. It began with a swimming suit
competition and was held on a beach for the tourists to choose the most beautiful bathing beauty
in America. The first winner was a sixteen years old girl, Margaret Gorman, who was declared
the beauty queen and awarded the title Miss America. Pageants were then introduced into the
lives of Americans and became a major event, although they were discontinued from 1929 to
1932 due to the Great Depression. Pageants eventually became very common in the 1950s, as it
was aired on television.
With the inspiration of beauty pageants, business owner started the first child beauty
contests in the 1960s at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey to catch costumers attentions.
Since then, the beauty pageant industry has become an increasingly lucrative business, bringing

in over five billion dollars profit a year. Even through the original purpose of it was used as a
marketing tool to attract more customers in order to make profit in business; it was then used to
raise money for charities later after the industries had made enough profit through the beauty
competitions. For example, the Miss World pageant has raised 150 million dollars for childrens
charities each year for its popularity. Nowadays, the beauty competitions have become political,
educational and entertaining events.
Although beauty pageants are competitions, they are also social events where participants
are able to expand their social networks all over the world. Contestants learn social skills through
the interactions with each other and understand the importance of friendly cooperation during the
pageants. They also learn discipline for following the rules of the beauty contests (Anderson19).
The participants are usually set to strict schedules which dont help them for winning the
pageants only but also encourage them to set a daily planner even after the contests. The
schedules can improve their work efficiency and urge them to finish work before the due date.
The contestants also develop eating habits to help them to maintain healthy body shapes. They
practice for long hours to perfect routines and speeches. Since most of the pageants have
appearances at public events, there are a lot of chances for them to perform themselves in front
of a large group of strangers on a regular basis. It helps them to overcome their shyness and stage
fright. The participants build up their self-confidence and improve their communication skills
from those activities.
Similar to sports games and other kinds of contests, competitions urge the participants to
improve themselves in order to win the champion. It galvanizes the participants to work hard and
establish goals in order for them to become successful not just in the contest but also in the future.
The winner of the pageant is usually given an academic scholarship, which minimizes or refunds

the expenses of the participants academic year. The contestants also learn sportsmanship
through the pageants. Even if they didnt win the competitions, they learn to be cheerful losers.
They should understand that enjoying the process of the contests, respect and develop a sense of
fellowship with ones competitors is more important than the results of the pageants. Lewis
Carroll points out that through the observations of how the contestants of the pageants like to
dress up and be photographed. The pageants are actually healthy for female because dressing up
gives them a sense of personal power and is an adequate form of play for the child participants
(Anderson58).
Like any other competitions, beauty pageants are not just a day or an hour show, it takes
a lot of time for the competitors to prepare. Especially for child beauty contests, these events take
up most of the kids time. Their time is invested in practice on how to walk in a more beautiful
way and answer the questions appropriately on stage. People then begin to wonder, where is the
time for the children to go to school to study? That truth is they do not have time to study in
school or socialize with their classmates. Since they are required to practice for long hours at a
time or travel away from home several times a year, some of them may have feelings of missing
out on fun that their age should have. It seems like their parents concerned more on helping their
children to win a trophy or a crown than having education. In fact, it is an important period in
childrens life to gain knowledge in school. Rather than wearing glamorous dress with heavy
makeup and performing on stage, they should be sitting in a classroom and having class with a
teacher to receive the appropriate education just like other kids. The adult participants have less
time for their real jobs, studies and with families.
Beauty pageants also influence both the participants and viewers to develop superficial
values. It teaches people that outer appearance is the primary judge of the persons character and

they tend to judge the others on their appearance but this concept is totally wrong. Even William
Shakespeare, who lived decades ago, wrote that appearances are deceiving in the Renaissance
play The Tragedy of Macbeth. The pageants confirms a certain standards of beauty, everyone
else then tries to follow that standard, anyone who fails to maintain the standard is considered
ugly. With the emphasis placed on appearance in beauty contests, the child contestants become
devastatingly concerned with the way they look before they can walk. The participants of the
pageants usually result in two extremes: winning the beauty contest means successful in the
future; on the other side, losers are failure and they think of themselves as imperfect. Some of
them may even try to fit the ideal to become unrealistically perfect through risky actions such
as plastic surgery and crazy diets.
One of the most common reasons for people to participate in a beauty competition is the
prize that is often offered to the winner. Prizes are usually the subjects of advertisements that
include slogans such as Win Cash! Win Scholarships! Become Famous! to attract females to
join beauty pageants. Many young females, who compete with a hope of winning contests for
prizes, fail to realize that the prizes sometimes are not even enough to expenses of the pageants.
According to NPRs Brenda Salinas, the cost of preparing for a USA pageant can run into
thousands of dollars, which is a significant expense for some participants (Salinas). She also
indicated that a participant has to spend around 200 dollars for an interview outfit; another 200
dollars for a fashion swimsuit; 500 to 2000 dollars for a gown and 100 dollars for cosmetics
(Salinas). Moreover, fitness training, coaching and photography push the cost even higher.
For child beauty contests, the participants parents pay for entry fees, training program,
accommodation, hair and cosmetics services by a professional to make sure their children dress
up like a Barbie doll on stage. Some of them may even get loans out just for having their children

involved in pageants and get angry at their daughters when they lose. It is ironic that parents are
more willing to spend money on designers and dresses than on the education of their children
(Wolfe 430).
In the television show Toddlers in Tiaras, the mothers of the young contestants are
always running around frantically leading their daughter to perform for the judges without asking
the wills of their children. Some parents even force them to smile for long periods of time. The
children are getting overwhelmed as their mothers become more emotional. Their mothers are so
concerned and determined the appearance of them and show that those competitions are their
lives. There was a contestant who was afraid of standing on stage to perform and the only reason
why she participate that pageant was because of her mother. Psychologist Martina M. Cartwright
concluded that those parents may have a psychological condition known as achievement by
proxy distortion. It means that parents are unable to tell the difference between their need and
those of their children (Blue).
Since there is only one winner in a competition, that leaves the other contestants in the
losing category. Therefore, there is a lot of pressure for a female to perform themselves on stage
and judge by the others. The frustration of worrying to lose leads to future emotional problem
such as depression and other psychological complications. Stacy Weiner, who writes frequently
for health between families and relationships, stated that the participants especially for children
in beauty contests have been linked to three of the most common mental health problems of
female: low self-esteem, eating disorders and depression (Weiner). Although adult female
competitors face the same problem as the child competitors, the beauty contests tend to be a
severer distraction in a childs life.

Low self-esteem seems to be very common among women of any age. Beauty pageants
are contests in which female are rated on the basis of physical beauty. Even though sometimes
talent and personality are involved in the pageants for the contestants to show their inner beauties,
people tend to put a stronger focus on the appearances of them. The talent portion is also
irrelevant in child beauty pageants because the participants are still too young to have a real
talent to perform on stage in front of strangers or opinions on world issues. Their answers to the
questions that are asked in front of the camera are based on the way their coaches taught them
behind the stage. Therefore, beauty pageants are solely based on the appearances, especially for
children, which influence people to become obsessed with their looks.
The contestants and viewers also develop the concept of hating the fat and admiring the
skinny through participating or watching the beauty competitions. Nicole Hunter, who was a
child beauty contestant, said that she does not even know how to feel attractive to herself without
having make-up on her face. It shows that a childs natural beauty is marred by fake plastic
smiles, false eyelashes and polished appearances throughout these beauty pageants. This idea
does not affect the participants of the pageants only, but also the audience who are watching the
shows. People begin to believe fat is ugly and try to keep themselves as skinny as possible in
order to become beautiful.
Eating disorders have also become a serious problem for the competitors in the beauty
contests. The participants, particularly young children, usually think that the only way to become
a beauty queen is through the exploitation of their bodies, which means to be skinny. As a
result, they start to develop eating disorders such as bulimia and anorexia to make their bodies
look perfect. Yasmin indicated that Miss America of 2008, Kirsten Haglund is not well known
for winning the national title but for being a recovering anorexia victim (Khorram). Anorexia

nervosa is an eating disorder that causes people to obsess about their weight, the food they eat
and maintain a weight which is unhealthy for their age and height. Kristen said, I always
equated beauty and worth with being skinny.(Khorram) She leant ballet from just three years
old, so the first ideal female body image for her was very thin. She began to starve herself for
body shape perfection and experienced anorexia. It has been tested that one out of every hundred
women between the ages from ten to twenty are experiencing eating disorders and poor body
image. The contestants may feel like they need to be extremely skinny and unhealthy to be
worthy.
As most pageants often require crash dieting, for young children, their parents may
encourage them to lose weight quickly in order to fit into small costumes or display tiny bodies
in swimsuit-centered fitness competitions. These diets mainly include sugary snacks and sports
drinks for several days to help them to maintain energy and enthusiasm. (Wolfe433) The diets
also harm their bodies for not receiving appropriate nutrition and teach them unhealthy
approaches to food that can contribute to eating disorders. Therefore, the participants of pageants
usually have weight issues, feeling like their physical appearance is everything, and that a slim
physique is the only acceptable appearance. With so many magazines and television shows
giving them images of what a healthy body looks like, they try so hard to fit the appearance the
media and modeling agencies are painting as a perfect person.
No doubt that those beauty pageants are significant in defining what is attractive or
beautiful in the society. Most of the women and girls who either participate or watch the
pageants try to live up to the standard of beauty that is shown to them, which is not real. These
people often feel that they are ugly and this leads to depression when they fail to maintain this
unrealistic standard of beauty. Like any other competitions, there is only one winner and the

other contestants lose. Some of the losers may even develop extreme thoughts that what they had
been working for months is meaningless.
Many little girls leave the stage with nothing but tears streaming down their faces. How
many times have people seen child contestants crying because they lost in their competitions?
Sometimes their parents even yelled at them for not winning the pageants. Is filling their young
eyes with tears of rejection really the right thing to do for these children?(Eubanks1). When a
female loses in a beauty pageant, she often claims that she is not as beautiful as the other people
in the contest and in the eyes of society. Afterwards, she becomes depressed and this creates a
low self-image for herself. This may lead to eating disorders or even suicide in her unneeded
attempted to become what people think is beautiful.
Susan Anderson, who has been photographing beauty contestants for three years, shows
the details and work that goes into making the participants glitzy through photos in her book
The Extravagant World of Child beauty pageants. The photos are all of girls that age from one
to thirteen years old. They all look glamorous, dress up like a little woman and sexy. Some of
them still look precious, like elaborate child Madame Alexandra dolls, while some of the others
look eerie, like ageless collectible figurines symbolizing the real beauty. But the major issue is
that all the looks of the girls have no longer being completely human. The scariest photo is that a
girl as little as three is making attempts at showing cleavage, endlessly exposing midriffs and
squeezing herself into super short skirt (Anderson113). In a study done by Anna Wonderlich, it
was discovered that there was, "A significant association between childhood beauty pageant
participation and increased body dissatisfaction, difficulty trusting interpersonal relationships,
and greater impulsive behaviors, and indicate a trend toward increase feelings of ineffectiveness"
(296).

While it is clear that beauty pageants can be damaging to their participants, especially
ones who begin their career of pageantry at a young age, nothing is being done to solve this
problem. There are no laws that regulate the beauty competitions; the government is not involved
in these types of event. Every pageant is organized independently and rules are specifically set
for each one. This variance in guidelines allows an opportunity for anyone of any age to enter
into beauty contests. Due to the no apparent laws in some states, it is presumed that there are no
laws concerning beauty pageants (Nussbaum1). Instead of caring about how the aspects of
pageants influence the participants negatively, the only concern of pageants promoters is how
much profit they can make throughout the contests. For child beauty contests, many of the
participants are still too young to recognize the full extent of damaging consequences involved in
pageantry. The absolute truth is those children are too little to be forced into an adult world.
As the public is getting more concern on the controversies of beauty pageants, the
number of people that side with the feminists who protest the beauty pageants increases. They
believed those contests promote an ideal of conformity and superficially that ultimately hurts
women. In response to those protests, some countries start to take action for setting up a law to
regulate those pageants. In France, where pageants are far less intense and frequent than those in
America, the Senate approved a ban on child pageants as an amendment to a bill promoting
gender equality (A Gate to Inequality1). The writer suggests that in order to save the female,
especially for children, from the beauty contests, the United States should stop glamorizing the
child pageant world and pull it from national television. In Indonesia, the clerics started a protest
for banning the Miss World beauty contests, and said that the exposure of skin by women in such
a competition was too sexual for the events and violated Islamic teachings (Cockrane1).

Beauty pageants have held for nearly a hundred years and become more common
throughout the world. As the popularity of the contests increases, people begin to aware about
the detrimental and beneficial impacts that they brings to a females perception of self-worth.
The lifestyle of beauty pageant contestants has proven to be one full of stress and negative selfevaluation which can ultimately lead to psychological disorders such as low self-esteem,
depression and eating disorders. The irony of beauty pageants is that something meant to
showcase beauty and goodness instead draw out such human ugliness, rewarding physical and
behavioral falseness, stirring bitter competition over superficial titles and reducing individuals to
appearances. In order to stop the lifelong harmful effects of beauty pageants on female,
particularly in young girls, the government should establish state laws that set the minimum age
requirements and event restrictions on beauty contests throughout the United States.

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