Children Exploited to Fulfill Parent's Long Lost Dreams

Children Exploited to Fulfill Parent's Long Lost Dreams

Hundreds of parents sign-up their children in beauty pageants every year, spending thousands of dollars in entry fees, dresses, coaches, makeup, and travel. As an excuse, they pretend to teach confidence to their children, as well as trying to convince themselves they are not exploiting their children by saying they do it for them. Despite all the lies, the children are painted a marvelous picture that lures them into entering the pageant to make it seem like they are the ones that want to participate in such contests. Meanwhile, parents make up excuses to carry a clean conscience as they sign up their toddler to an exhibition. Engaging children in these contests is inhumane due to the fact that they do not have a say in their actions, as well as being too naïve to know the real reason behind these acts of selfishness. Beauty pageants expose contestants to stress, controversy, and artificiality, enhancing these issues to an exploitive extent for minors.

Sweet cherubs that enter pageants are promptly introduced to premature stress. With the amount of competitive progenies fighting for the title of the prettiest and most talented, the pressure to look like real-life Barbie dolls seriously affects the mental, and often physical, health of the contestants. Contending involves knowingly putting the children in a scrutinizing environment ("Living Dolls"). Studies show that being judged from such a young age leads to developing eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia, damaging their self-esteem (Reed). Being prone to all types of disorders will affect the lives of these children up to the point when they reach a maturity level to realize what they were put through by those who raised them, breaking their hearts and forming immense disillusionment. All these baby dolls forming unnecessary rivalries at an age when they are usually forming friendships with random darlings in the playground defeats the purpose of exposing them to these types of experiences. "Momagers" planting seeds of despair in the minds of minors is completely inhumane and despicable.

Once unsheltered, the child is unprotected. As soon as a name is registered in that first pageant, that first title is won, or that moment when the little girl trips when performing her talent routine, forgetting any type of event is not an option. The basis of these children pageants are Miss America, Miss Universe, and Miss World. If these major companies ran by big businessmen are contradiction, conflict, discrimination, and sabotage, (Stoeltje), why would any human with a working brain think the descendant contests would be any different? These ritualized competitions are clearly linked to capitalism and are all about the glitz and the glamour. Due to the mere fact that tragedy makes good TV, all a network needs are spoiled brats dressed in erotic costumes, being sexualized at an early aged, controlled by screaming obese mothers who just want as much time in the spotlight as possible. The best modern example is the obnoxious redneck family of Alana Thompson, better known as Honey Boo Boo. The worst part of the cattle-auction-like pageant tragedy is not the fact that a murder of a contestant of over 10 years ago is still more important than the fact that 800,000 children get severely beaten every year and those statistics do not attract the press and the rest of Americans giving ratings to "Toddlers and Tiaras" instead of the breaking news (Kincaid).

The mentality of the parents longing glamour do not contain genuine intentions when competing for money. It is understandable to give blood, sweat,