Collective Shout has initiated a petition in response to the news that a US pageant company plans to import its child beauty competitions to Australia. You can find the petition on the 
Care2 petition site . Please sign and circulate it through all your networks. The petition reads:
Child beauty pageant company Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant is planning to hold a ‘Child Beauty Pageant’ in Melbourne, Australia, in July.
Many psychologists and child development authorities agree that child beauty pageants are not in the best interest of healthy child development.
A study conducted by Anna Wonderlich et.al (2005) in the Journal of Treatment and Prevention reported ‘A significant association between childhood beauty pageant participation and increased body dissatisfaction, difficulty trusting interpersonal relationships, and greater impulsive behaviors and indicates a trend toward increased feelings of ineffectiveness.’
Kids free to be Kids, the Australian Childhood Foundation and Psychologist Dr Michael Carr Gregg have previously called for children under 14 to be banned from these contests.
Television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras reveal the child exploitation endemic in these pageants. Child advocates around the world have spoken out about the sexualised clothing, suggestive dance moves, hours of grooming and preening required. They have expressed concern about the way pageants provide external validation to girls that their physical appearance is what is most important in being female. They have criticised the way child beauty pageants re-inforce stereotypical norms about female beauty. They have also pointed out that adultifying children in pageants and elsewhere invites us to see them as older than they are, which puts them (and other children) at risk of inappropriate treatment.
Pitting young girls against each other in a competition based on physical appearance and performance is harmful to their wellbeing.Research on the sexualisation of children shows that reinforcing an emphasis on looks and attractiveness leads to negative body image, disordered eating, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.
We call on the Federal Minister for Early Childhood and Youth, the Hon. Peter Garrett and the Victoria Minister for Children and Early Childhood Development, Wendy Lovell, to take action to prevent these style of pageants in Australia and (with State colleagues) to consider legislative measures to ban all future pageants for children.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LItnLQbFceE[/youtube]
3 Responses
“A study conducted by Anna Wonderlich et.al (2005) in the Journal of Treatment and Prevention reported ‘A significant association between childhood beauty pageant participation and increased body dissatisfaction”
Call me crazy, but I don’t think it’s any coincidence that America is the fattest country in the world. In a country so obsessed with beauty and food, you can’t tell me, that given the results of this study, the link between beauty pageants and body dissatisfaction, obesity isn’t also linked. To me, obesity/binge eating/over eating is an inevitable conclusion along with anorexia and bulimia, under the eating disorder umbrella!
If the government is going to look into this, then perhaps it’s another consideration they should take into account. They are already trying to promote a healthy Australia and get our kids fit and active and from what I’ve read the child obesity rates in Australia have finally started to drop, if only a tiny bit. Think of the negative affect these pageants could have on our obesity rate in the long term, with more and more of our children being subjected to them by over zealous parents!
We don’t need this damaging culture here. We want our children happy and healthy and confident in themselves for the RIGHT REASONS. Not because they’re comparing their body parts to somebody else’s!
Please don’t open up the door for them to walk directly in to an eating disorder!
i am not against or for pagents,but it is important to teach young girls to take care of there apperance and her body.
If they want the pageants it is no ones business. Those who object do not have to go.I think the objectors would be the feminist lesbian type. Stop children being dumped in day care that is child cruelty.