Beauty Pageants: Not for Children

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Beauty Pageants: Not for Children Basically, a beauty pageant is an assemblage of girls or women at which judges select the most beautiful. Beauty pageants mainly are divided into categories such as the talent portion, the modeling portion and the personal interview or the question and answer portion. Beauty pageant winners are called beauty queens. Awards for these beauty contests include titles, tiaras or crowns, sashes, and cash prizes. Indeed today, beauty pageants for young girls are becoming more and more popular. However, I believe that young girls should not be allowed to participate and join beauty pageants because it affects their overall well-being in a negative way. First, these child beauty pageants damage the young girls psychologically and physically. A lot of child advocates and psychologists have already spoken out against child beauty pageants and claim that these pageants are not really helpful for healthy child development. According to William Pinsof, a clinical psychologist and president of the Family Institute at Northwestern University, “Being a little Barbie doll says your body has to be a certain way and your hair has to be a certain way. In girls particularly, this can unleash a whole complex of destructive self-experiences that can lead to eating disorders and all kinds of body distortion in terms of body image.” Also, according to Michele Berg, who wrote the article "Child Beauty Pageants: Read the Warning Label", possible effects for young girls who are pressured into joining beauty pageants include the development of eating disorders, depression, and even cutting. Child beauty pageants are not as glamorous as they seem to be on television. They can cause young girls to develop serious psychological illnesses because they feel the need to be better and they mainly want to please their parents. Other health problems that a good

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