They compete against other contestants for an award of money, pageant titles, trophies, and a big sparkly tiara. However I don't approve of the parents position to put their child through this, and how they treat their daughters throughout the competition. Not only are they exploiting their five-year-olds for their own personal gain, they are putting their child through so much misery to look beautiful. They live through their daughters fame and glory, and make their daughters look very high maintenance. The Toddlers and Tiara girls go through hours of make-up, to different hairstyles, and wearing big fake wigs.
As Peggy Orenstein’s three year-old daughter entered the “princess phase,” Orenstein became increasingly frustrated. As a feminist, she worried about the negative effects the princess obsession would have on her daughter and other young girls in their futures. In “Cinderella and Princess Culture,” Orenstein sets out to discuss these effects. She discovers that although it seems as if this princess craze is creating negative gender stereotypes at an early age, maybe princess enthusiasts are really benefitting from their obsession. Orenstein has gotten accustomed to adults assuming her daughter likes pink and princesses.
Wearing a short, blue, bodycon skirt, a crisp, white halter top, a pair of tall, black pleather boots, and a platinum blonde wig; the three year old strutted her stuff for the eager audience, her enthusiastic mother, and the millions watching at home. These are the types of scandalous acts that can ruin a child completely. Performing in beauty pageants can lead to “struggles with perfection, dieting, eating disorders and body image can take their toll in adulthood.” (Cartwright) The trails that come with the constant practicing and preparing for a contest can simply tear a child apart “tears, tantrums and fits frequently ensue with some adults mocking crying children. As result, child performers may believe that parental and/or adult love or approval are anchored to how perfectly they look or how well they ignite the stage with their presence.” (Cartwright) Hardly recognizable the tiny pageant princesses and princes bounce around the
Young girls are more afraid of becoming fat than they are of nuclear war, cancer, or losing their parents. Why do people increase the standards they want to achieve to such astronomical lengths? Why are children as young as 10 years old dieting? At that age I couldn’t care what I looked like, I was too busy playing in the sand-pit and looking for my next great adventure. But we have to realise now that it’s just society’s norm in this day and age to have the hour glass figure and not ‘let yourself go’.
Since there is no law to this, there’s no regulation to what the contestants can show on stage. The boundaries of sexuality on these shows are pushed inch by inch. The promoters hold all the power and choices to what they want to see and expect on that stage. Some mothers lie about their child’s age so the child can appear more mature and poised for that age group; now some pageants require birth certificates along with the entry form to validate age. But not all the pageants have this requirement.
Ana is a young woman who is at the beginning of experiencing life. She has strong family values, wants a good future… and is a little overweight. Her mom Carmen, throughout the movie, tells her to lose weight because if she did, she would look good. Ana does not listen to her mom, she loves the way she is, and this is a myth she proved wrong. Her mom continues to remind her how overweight she is and says things like “Look at you!
Let me remind you again that this is why girls under 16 shouldn’t be allowed to be models. The fashion industry is to blame for most girls’ fixation on being thin according to the 89% of respondents who took part in a survey conducted by the Girl Scouts of Australia. Psychologists and eating-disorder experts are worried about this and so should we all. These children are part of the future generation. No one wants to see what could have been bright and healthy futures taken away from them simply because of their diet.
With people tormenting her about her cousins who were teen moms, or her father who made a fool of his drunken self in public, the poor girl felt like nothing more than dirt, and she wanted to be thought of as flawless and beautiful. Edith dreamed of being a celebrity, she wished to be a perfect girl, and to live in a perfect world "in which only married women had babies, and in which men and women stayed married forever." The shacks in which Eddie grew up were less than desirable, and supposedly thought of as contemptible, by people of a higher social class. When Edith moved to the boarding house, with set meal times, she was quite ashamed to think of how people living in the shacks didn't have meal times, they simply found any food they could and ate by themselves when they were hungry. The potato-chip plant that Eddie worked at
This is disappointing to me. How are little girls suppose to grow up with any self confidence when something as big as the Miss USA pageant is making them feel like their bodies need to be altered to be beautiful? In our society thick or bigger women are not acceptable. It is skinny, tall, big boobs, and a tan that is in. And if your natural body type is so far from that, well then hurry and change yourself with thousands of dollars in cosmetic surgery.
In her essay, Barbie’s Body May be Perfect but Critics Remind Us It’s Plastic, Angela Cain analyzes how Barbie and other media icons affects women’s self image in our society. Barbie, one of the most popular fashion icons, has been shaping the way girls view their bodies since 1959. Barbie, and her unrealistic proportions, has been the idealistic body type. Women have struggled at great lengths to achieve the generally unattainable, to look like Barbie. Studies have shown that over 60 percent of women were unhappy with their bodies, as they have been raised comparing themselves with Barbie and other various models of the fashion industry.