The Stereotypes Of Child Beauty Pageants

Beauty pageants are viewed on television nationwide in America. It is a tradition for many pageant-based families. Researchers have stated in several ways how beauty pageants affect young viewers and people that are contestants. Beauty pageants affect the contestants by robbing them of their childhood, making the child self-conscious, and creating a false standard of beauty.
The Pageant world annihilates childhood for each contestant. It forces the child to grow up too fast and skip a part of life. These little girls become exposed to being a woman with all the costumes and makeup and “big” hair; it changes the girls (Lindsey). At this age, the child is not able to say no, especially with some of the mothers in the pageant world. With there being 5,000-child beauty …show more content…
Cartwright Ph.D.). Zawn Villines believes “there is value in focusing on their appearance as judged through the eyes of others. This can lead to significant body-image distortions, and adults who once participated in child beauty pageants may experience low self-esteem and poor body image.” (Villines). This thought of judgment affects the child and sometimes it affects the throughout the rest of their life. For Alyssa Clough her experience of beauty pageants had both a good and bad affects. The good affect from beauty pageants was that beauty pageants helped her to be a confident young woman she is today. The fact that she was already dealing with body image issue, during her pageant years, did not help her full when a group of adults constantly told her that she was second place. The judgment hurt her self-esteem. After Alyssa stopped, being a contestant she finally stopped caring about judgment of others and matured from the experience (Clough). Sadly the maturity does not happen all pageant contestants each one has a different