Child Beauty Pageants – Toddlers & Tiaras Controversy
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: October 10, 2011
WUNRN
People Magazine
September 26, 2011 Issue
Child beauty queens are taking the pageant world by storm with
pushy moms, temper tantrums, spray tans, fake teeth, and risqué costumes. This
week’s special double issue of PEOPLE examines the popular TLC reality TV
series Toddlers and Tiaras, which has reignited
controversy over a culture made notorious by the Jon Benet Ramsey tragedy.
Critics of the child pageant industry warn that the stresses of competition,
coupled with an extreme focus on physical appearance, can have a negative
effect long before these girls will be eligible for Miss America.
The parents behind these pageants continue to go to extreme lengths to win.
Their behavior, broadcast each week to more than 2 million viewers, is often
outrageous (waxing screaming children’s eyebrows; booking pre-pageant
chiropractor visits), and, to some, alarming. In an August Tiaras episode,
Lindsay Jackson outfitted daughter Madisyn Verst, then 4, with faux breasts and
padding for her derrière to more convincingly portray the curvaceous Dolly
Parton; a week later, Wendy Dickey dressed up her 3-year-old daughter Paisley
in Julia Roberts’ streetwalker costume from Pretty Woman, complete with cut-out
dress and over-the-knee boots. (She won.)
Many critics of the show, which has long showcased the behind-the-scenes tantrums
and controversial onstage moments, were outraged. “This is the most
blatant example of sexualization of a child that I have seen,” says
Melissa Henson of the Parents Television Council, which is calling for the
network to cancel the series. “There has to be a lesson here. This has
gone too far.” The network, for its part, denies any wrongdoing.
“Some of the costumes the families come up with may be deemed
inappropriate, but we’re just observing and documenting. We’re not costuming
the kids,” Amy Winter, TLC’s executive vice president and general manager,
says of Tiaras. “We’re not passing judgment and we’re not condoning
anything.”
Madisyn’s mother, Lindsay Jackson, herself a former pageant queen from Nashville, says padding her daughter’s costume was just a colorful
way to give her a little edge. “I think it’s cultural, the
reactions,” says Jackson, whose own mother helps foot the five-figure
annual bill for Maddy’s many pageants. “When she wore that [Dolly Parton
costume] to a pageant in Kentucky, people loved it; in Connecticut, they didn’t get it,” she says. (Pageants in the
south outnumber those in the rest of the country.) “Everyone acts like I
am trying to sexualize my daughter, but it’s ridiculous. If I put Maddy in a
Jason costume for Halloween, would people think I was trying to turn her into a
serial killer?”
“You are always going to have that one person who takes things too
far,” says Annette Hill of Universal Royalty, a Texas-based “glitz
pageant” featured on the series. “This is sensationalized because
it’s a TV show. People want to see outrageous,” she adds. “These are
just costumes. The kids are fully clothed. What girl doesn’t want to play with
Mom and do dress-up?”
But child development experts point to a difference between playing dress-up
and making a career of it. “Little girls are supposed to play with dolls,
not be dolls,” says Mark Sichel, a NY-based licensed clinical social
worker, who calls the extreme grooming common at pageants “a form of child
abuse.” Playing dress-up “is normal and healthy, but when it’s
demanded, it leaves the child not knowing what they want,” he says.
Accentuating their appearance with such accoutrements as fake hair, teeth,
spray tans and breast padding “causes the children tremendous confusion,
wondering why they are not okay without those things.”
Conversely, many pageant parents argue that there’s no better confidence
booster than winning a pageant. “My daughter is much more confident and
outgoing than other kids her age,” says Dickey, who first put Paisley in a
pageant at 6 months. “She has a huge personality. That will be important
later on.”
Categories: Releases
