“Destiny enjoys singing, dancing and, of course, pageantry” announces the beauty pageant’s MC as a made-up blonde in a white gown sashays across the stage. Did I mention that Destiny is a five year old child? Welcome to the world of Toddlers and Tiaras, an American reality TV series that follows the lives of children and their families as they prepare for and compete in beauty pageants.
Having recently sat through a Toddlers and Tiaras marathon (as research for a book chapter) I now consider myself an expert on winning children’s beauty pageants.
The first thing you need is a pushy and obnoxious mother who has no problem with screaming at her child. In one episode a mother screeches “Flirt! You’re not flirting!” as her six year old daughter practices her routine. “Stand up straight, suck your tummy in!” directs another. In one episode a girl cries in pain as her mother attempts to force an earring through a closed up ear piercing. And another ignores her five year child’s cries of protest as her eyebrows are forcibly waxed adding that her daughter “is just a bit, kind of terrified” because the last time “the wax was way too hot and it actually ripped off her skin”.
The second thing you need to do is fake-it-up. From the age of about two girls begin to wear fake hair, fake eyelashes and fake teeth sets (known as “flippers”). Almost all girls get fake tans with a number owning their own spray tanning machines at home. One four year old is taken on “diva days” where she is “treated” to facials, manicures and pedicures. Others have waxing, teeth whitening and chemical hair straightening as well as weaves and hair extensions.
And then there is the all-important clothing. “Glitz” outfits – dresses decked out with diamantes and other jewels – cost between five and ten thousand dollars. One mother admits that she has spent more than $15 000 that year alone on pageants, adding that if she saved the money her family “could probably live in a bigger home, but [winning Miss America] just feels like my daughter’s destiny.” Her daughter is only three. Other mothers talk about taking “second pageant jobs” to pay for the expensive and numerous competitions.
Then there is the cost of hair and make-up, professional photography and photo retouching (airbrushing), and the price of pageant coaches who train the girls. Brandi, a thirty-one year old Prozac-popping coach who thanks God for bringing her to pageantry, offers her six year old clients bonus advice on picking up boys, “I tell them to get with the smart boys- the nerdy ones- because when they grow up, they’re going to be the rich ones, and you can be a trophy wife”.
On pageant day parents wear tacky customized t-shirts displaying their child’s name and photo. Three year olds have “before and after” shots displayed on the show like on diet product advertisements. One mother feeds her child three cans of red-bull energy drink before competing to keep her “perky” during competition. A six month old girl already has seventy pageant titles to her name. Girls perform sexualised dance routines imitating MTV video clips. And boys compete too. One ‘Little Mr’ is introduced by the MC as “Matthew”, adding that “Matthew’s favourite person is his daddy in heaven”.
While the show may sound exploitative and crass, it is actually documenting the appalling and exploitative behaviour of stage parents who live vicariously through their children’s achievements. It’s incredibly cringe worthy to watch but the show offers an important window onto a world which many of us are only aware of through the adult outputs of the industry in the form of Miss Universe winners and runner-ups.
Meanwhile, the media continues to laud individuals such as Miranda Kerr and Jennifer Hawkins (and to a lesser extent Jessinta Campbell and Rachael Finch). These women, as supposed role models, teach little girls (and stage parents everywhere) that the easiest way for a girl in today’s society to achieve fame, fortune and success is to win a beauty competition.
It’s hardly surprising that little girls are now feeling anxious about their bodies at an earlier and earlier age. Nor is it surprising that they are learning to read their value as a person in terms of how their physical appearance is received by others. Seeing little girls being judged, scrutinized and assessed over their appearance is truly distressing. Even worse, the fact that this process is not only normalized but actually celebrated by their parents is just horrific.
Equating a girl’s self worth with her appearance is a dangerous and destructive game and one that the media encourages girls to play from a very early age. Parents should want to protect children from this message, not teach it to them.
If you haven’t watched it already, this ACA video is a must-see. It provides further evidence for the sheer ugliness – and harm – of child pageant culture. We meet the American woman behind plans to bring this toxic child exploitation fest to Australia in July – and the Melbourne woman who will run it here. She is already preparing her young daughters for entry. One reveals she doesn’t like wearing make-up – but that is clearly of insignificant to her mother who is too busy organising her daughter’s body waxing to care. Someone who does care is Julie Gale, my colleague and friend from Kids Free 2B Kids who also appears here.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlUhZ7pkBBk&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
See also ‘Mums to protest bringing US-style beauty pageants to Melbourne’ (It’s not just mums protesting of course).
13 Responses
These pageants are a world of wrong.
I am heartened that there are so many people opposed to bringing these to Australia.
Keep up the great work!
The pageants are awful.
I worry that focussing attention on the mothers of girls who participate works to set women up as ‘good mums’ and ‘bad mums’. ‘Bad mums’ are so easy to point the finger at, to blame in a society where all mothers are blamed; you just can’t win.
The decision that women make to enter their daughters in these competitions makes perfect sense in a world where porno-sexuality and appearances are packaged up and sold, endlessly promoted as the way to economic and social success and security.
Lets focus on the beauty and sex industries and the enormous power they hold and the choices they make. The individual women who enter their daughters have much less power; their only choice is whether their child competes or not.
It is the corporations who have the power to decide whether or not the pageant is held; and this is where the real power lies.
Campaigns against these pageants need to hold the corporations centrally accountable and not be tricked into just looking at individual women and girls who are simply fodder for the sexist, classist and racist corporate machinery.
You are right Ryl, that is where the focus has to lie. The mothers are as much a product of the culture as the girls. Collective Shout’s focus will be on pageant culture and what it represents. Protests will not target individual mothers or children.
This stuff reduces me to tears. WHAT are these parents thinking? For gods sake – PROTECT your child’s right to a real childhod!! That’s your job!
My 4 yr old daughter walked into the room while I was watching that clip and her first comment was ‘those girls look digusting’… but then in the next breath, she says ‘oh, but that one doesn’t’. O_o
4 years old and already judging others by the way they look… which makes me worry, even though she correctly identified that they don’t look like normal little girls.
I then had to have a chat with her about how those little girls were all fake and I had to explain fake tans and makeup and all the hair extensions and false teeth. Talk about distressing!!
I finished up by asking her if she would want to be sprayed with fake tan, wear false teeth and have makeup all over her and she (thankfully) shook her head and said ‘gross, no way’. I tried to explain about not judging people by the way they look but I’m not sure she understands, she’s only 4 after all.
My point being, if it’s this hard for me to explain to my daughter, how much harder is it going to be to get through to these little girls and their mothers???
Why would any mother want to turn her daughter into a freak?
Whilst I am completely appalled by the whole thing, I am a little disappointed in the ACA report with its repetition of phrases like, “only in America”. No, sexualisation and exploitation of children happens all over the world, and this is, sadly, just one extreme example. I have plenty of American friends who are also horrified about child beauty pageants and don’t see it as ‘typical’ American culture – any more than Big Brother, Australian Idol, the Biggest Loser or (for those old enough to remember it) Sylvania Waters are typical examples of Australian culture. Making snide comments about ‘American culture’ only serves to draw attention away from the main issue. (And if you think it’s fine to roll your eyes and say, “only in America”, ask yourself if you’d be equally comfortable saying (for example) “only in China” or “only in Palestine”…)
I think it’s fine and right to protest these pageants. They are potentially hugely damaging. But let’s remember that we’re protesting them BECAUSE they’re damaging, not because it’s a bit of ‘American culture’ that we don’t want here.
Great point Emily Sue. We should oppose these pageants everywhere they are held, because of harm to all children.
@Ryl
I think you are dead right. This shouldn’t be about wielding the “good mother” batton against mothers struggling to raise their daughters. That’s a really important point that this is about the cultural paradigm that equates a girl’s self worth with her appearance and which legitimizes the scrutiny of girl’s bodies, not individual mothers. Likewise the comment about this not being about America is very apt. This should not be an anti-American rant. It’s an anti-child exploitation rant.
Absolutely blame and hold the sex industry and its male perpetrators accountable not once again focusing on women. This is precisely what our male supremacy delights in – dividing women into supposedly ‘good or bad women’ which neatly ensures male accountability once again is ignored.
Beauty pageants exist for one reason only – the profit motive and what better method than indoctrinating women and their female children into believing the misogynistic lie that a female’s only value and worth lies in whether or not she is sufficiently ‘sexually hot’ to males.
Remember advertising would not be so effective it it wasn’t proven to work and likewise with beauty pageants – the incessant ‘drip drip’ effect of malestream media, popular culture and its brother the sex industry ensures that women and girls are receiving only one male dominant message. Namely women and girls aren’t human – we are all apparently males’s disposable sexual service stations.
These parades of young girls are foul, and seriously disgusting. These poor girls should be taken away from their parents, there are a lot of people out there that struggle to have children or never can, that deserve these beautiful girls 100 billion times more.
The parents of these girls are very disappointing, and quite often make me feel sick.
Lets teach the parents the truth and let them see the life that they are stealing for their children.
Horrifying….what else can be said? It is simply one of the saddest spectacles I have seen. I could only watch half of the video and that was the ‘horrible but can’t look away’ thing. It is almost unbelievable that this sort of thing would come to Australia. Shame on them. By the way I am no wowser or prude…I am very liberal in my ideas but when it comes to kids, especially ones at this age, that is another thing altogether. There simply is NO justification for this exploitation.
What makes this truly awful for me is how many of the parents seem to be in complete denial about the fact that their children are clearly not enjoying themselves. Being treated like that by your parent has got to be at least as damaging as the more obvious aspects of pageant exploitation.
Karl Stefanovic’s comment at the end of that clip absolutely made my day, though!
Let’s just tell our daughters and grand-daughters that if they dress like sl..s, dance like strippers, and don’t forget the fake tan, teeth, hair, make-up, waxing and high heels, then they’ll make good money……what a great career path…….but then again, once they turn 18 doesn’t it become illegal?
And then isn’t there a name for those who promote and gain financially. I think that is illegal too!