Child Beauty Pageants

Fortune and Scrutiny; What All Comes along with Beauty Pageants? Throughout the years, the enrollment numbers for child beauty pageants have more than quadrupled in size and are still growing. In 1964, there were 35,000 contestants enrolled in a child beauty pageant and now there are 250,000 contestants who have enrolled, according to Becca Horton. There are so many different kinds of pageants that are available to contestants. Some examples of the different pageants are semi-glitz pageants, full-glitz pageants, and scholarship pageants. They are all different, yet very much alike. Child beauty pageants are just like the pageants made for the older contestants. They may contain evening dresses, perform a talent, catwalk a runway, and an interview. …show more content…
Most contestants have the mind set of thinking they always need aids to help you feel good or pretty in order to win. Growing up thinking material things are need to make you feel beautiful will affect you as an adult. In the article “Child Beauty Pageants”, the author argues “beauty pageants teach children that they need improvements like hair extensions, makeup, flippers, spray tans, or acrylic nails to feel good about themselves” (“Child Beauty Pageants”). These small alterations made before pageants tell the children that if they don’t have perfect teeth to wear flippers, or if they’re to pale then they need spray tans. If this is done at every pageant the children become more self-aware and self-conscientious of how they look compared to how they should look. In order for the contestants to have all of these alteration cost lots of money for the …show more content…
This becomes a problem when the children are taught to parade around in outfits that are suitable for women. Henry Giroux, in his essay "Innocence Lost: Child Beauty Pageants and The Politics of Abuse." asserts that “children are taught burlesque-like routines, identifying themselves through the adult gaze, and portray to be the same as little women when performing”. Giroux’s point was that if parents are teaching their child to perform like a show girls, the pageant contestants are becoming more sexualized. Soon the child will not know how to properly act outside of pageants. The contestants also learn from these performances to gain approval of adults is from how they are looked at. This may cause the contestants to long for the attention they were given when

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