Little girl beauty pageants...All in good fun or creepy as hell?

[cherish44]

I'm watching this fuckery on VH1 right now...put me down in the creepy as hell camp.

[LaraMN]

1. Creepy as hell.

I don't even want my daughter to see the commercials for the show.

It's right up there with the skimpy-ass bikinis they make for two-year-old girls.

[Pool Hall Ace]

72. What?? Skimpy-ass bikinis for two-year-olds?

That's barely out of diapers. In some cases, still in diapers. Gross! :puke:

[HopeHoops]

2. Perverted, sick, disgusting, and warped - not that I'm opinionated or anything.

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Creepy, and this reality show about it makes it even worse.

[Richardo]

4. I say the pageants should be illegal, the kids put in foster care, and the parent(s) sterilized.

But that's me.

[cherish44]

6. No kidding, this is all about the parents, not the kids...

"We can retire after you win this pageant."

[oedura]

28. No doubt...

I remember one old coot from some documentary or news report on this garbage. "First prize is a Cadillac," she crowed. "...and Grandma needs a brand new Cadillac."

For some reason, though, Grandma couldn't just get off her asss and go buy a new Cadillac. She and her daughter chose to pimp out her granddaughter instead.

[auntAgonist]

5. exploitation, wrong, creepy

I see NO redeeming value in child beauty pageants at all. They don't even LOOK like children when they are all "dolled up"

disgusting.

aA
kesha

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

7. Creepy and perverted

I think it's just putting your child on display for pedophiles.

[Bake]

8. Creepy. Hands down, creepy.

No question about it.

Bake

[Heidi]

9. Their very existance shows very little confidence in what we, as adult women,

believe about our daughters, their many layers, their potential beyond childhood "cuteness." Very, very sad.

[wickerwoman]

50. At best, they give girls an inflated sense of their own value based on "sparkle"...

their ability to be insincere and perky at all times.

There's a great Wife Swap where the mother is a pageant mom and keeps a Christmas tree year round. Her daughter gets a present every single day (because she's so great she deserves one in her parents eyes). Wait til this kid gets in the real world. And the kid's smile is so wide and phoney you can actually see her straining around the eyes.

Creepy and emotionally abusive to brainwash your kid into thinking that a huge fake smile is the key to life.

[Iggo]

10. Both.

[cherish44]

12. I can't tell if these girls are genuinely having fun or not

They say they're having fun but I think they're under a lot of pressure.

[redqueen]

34. Yep.

Little kids want to please their parents. These kids' parents make it very clear what would please them.

There may be exceptions, but regardless...

[HopeHoops]

11. I'm thinking the RW blog posts would probably be "WOO HOO - check out the one in red!"

You know how freepers can be...

[Arugula Latte]

13. Creepy, crappy, Cripes!

Gives me the heebie jeebies, especially when the little girls do the full Jon Benet with the fake teeth and plastered on make-up.

:scared:

[Strong Atheist]

14. Welcome to DU!

:toast:

[cherish44]

16. Thank you!

DU Rocks!
:headbang:

[Deep13]

15. Really, really wrong. nt

[AlCzervik]

17. icky and their parents are even worse. Stop trying to live through your kids.

[skygazer]

18. Creepy and disgusting

And should be considered a form of child abuse. :scared:

[Bertha Venation]

19. Not just creepy as hell. Perverted and evil. Child-ruining. Horrid.

[flvegan]

20. Creepy as hell.

[LibertyLover]

21. Creepy and weird

About 20 years ago I got back in touch with a friend from high school. She was married and living in Rockland County, New York, not too far from my home at the time in New Jersey. She suggested that we get together and so I drove up one afternoon to meet her kids, her second husband and talk. What I walked into was creepy. She had two girls with the second husband and the oldest, 4 or 5 when I met her, was in pageants. My friend, whom I'll call Alice (name changed), had had the kid in pageants since she first learned to walk. There were rhinestone crowns all over the house as well as trophies. From what I gathered, in the pageants for the really young kids, just about everyone is a winner - Best Smiler, Best Crawler, etc. As you get older - around 3 or 4, things get more competitive and less bling is given out. Alice proudly showed me a formal dress she had just purchased for her kid's next big pageant and gushed about how it had cost her $400 (in 1988 dollars) and was, with the possible exception of one or two bridesmaids' dresses I had had the misfortune to have in the back of my closet, the ugliest thing I had ever seen - electric blue inexpensive taffeta with lots of flounces and 3 miles of really cheap machine-made lace. She also told me that she hadn't told her husband how much it had cost because he was a small farmer and not rolling in money. If he had heard how much it really cost he would have made her stop the pageants. Her mother had helped her buy it and Alice was hoping that her kid won in one of the money categories so that she could pay her mom back. I also got to watch her kid's performance from her last pageant. The kid did some sort of ballet/modern dance/gymnastic routine to a rock song. She had enough makeup on to be mistaken for Tammy Faye and a hair style that would not have been out of place in a Texas megachurch. I found it painful but apparently the judges liked it. I did not have kids at the time and frankly thought I never would, but vowed right then and there that if I ever did, there was no way on the Gods' green earth that I would ever put them in a pageant. Fast forward 20 years and I have the cutest most adorable daughter in the world. People have come up to me and told me I should put her on tv or in beauty pageants. I am polite, but my stock answer is something along the lines of no way in hell. I find it creepy and just too weird.

[Bertha Venation]

58. "a hair style that would not have been out of place in a Texas megachurch"

:rofl:

The best friends of someone I dated also had a daughter in pageants. I couldn't stand being in their house.

[Sheltiemama]

66. The higher the hair, the closer to God.

A Southern saying.

[Sheltiemama]

67. The fake teeth are the finishing creepy touch.

They're creepy to begin with, but when I was watching one of these shows and they told about the fake teeth, which they call flippers, a light bulb went off. The instant those little girls put those fake teeth in their mouths, they become the very definition of creepy. One little girl refused to wear them. There's hope for her yet.

[Burma Jones]

22. Creepy and Pathetic

[Scout]

23. creepy, creepy, sick shit n/t

[Fire Walk With Me]

24. Creepy as hell.

The "Pageant" at the end of Little Miss Sunshine just killed the rest of the movie for me.

[HarukaTheTrophyWife]

26. That kid's talent skit rocked

[Fire Walk With Me]

27. It did indeed, but to me, did not completely purge the surrounding creep.

It was there within it, being funny, and did not completely usurp the environment, which I thought was what they were after...and this failure to me, harms the film.

[Hippo_Tron]

25. I don't find it abhorrent in general but it goes too far

Having 5 year olds wear a dress and show off a talent is one thing. Spray tanning them and having them strut around in swimsuits is another. There are certain aspects of those pageants that really need to be reserved until they get older.

I would never push my daughter to do such a thing because I do think it does teach the wrong values and can really lower self-esteem. If my daughter did want to do it I would allow it, but only if the pageant didn't involve swimsuits and spray tans.

[oedura]

29. They're grotesque. (nt)

[timtom]

55. Grotesque!

Perfect word. Wish I'd thought of that.

[redqueen]

30. Creepy as hell, no question. (nt)

[Dangerously Amused]

31. Creepy bordering on cruelty.

"Well honey, you didn't win that pageant because you're just not pretty enough. And no you can't have ice cream on the way home, we don't want you gaining too much weight. And you better start smiling more, nobody likes to see a sad five year old."

:puke:


ETA: I wonder how many pedophiles attend those things. :scared:

[La Lioness Priyanka]

32. both. i think they are intended in good spirit but are still creepy

[Shell Beau]

33. I think a little girl wanting to participate in maybe one is ok. When

it becomes a sport or whatever it is called, it is sick. I have seen some of the behind the scenes stuff and it is scary.

[Sultana]

35. CREEPY

[Initech]

36. You should see the movie "Little Miss Sunshine" if you havent already.

That movie really puts the creepy-as-hell young girl beauty pageants in a completely warped perspective.

[suninvited]

40. That movie is hilarious !

I have never laughed so hard in my life when she started her routine.

[Initech]

43. Oh same here.

What's even funnier is how the entire room has a weird, uncomfortable silence except for the biker guy who's clapping along to "Superfreak". :rofl: :rofl:

[suninvited]

45. and then you realized

this is what the (dead) grandpa has been working so hard to teach her.

Some people didn't like the movie, didn't understand why it got so many awards. I think it was genius.

[Initech]

51. That movie was sooooooo fucking genius.

And yeah that was exactly the point - the grandpa and the daughter had been scheming to completely undermine those beauty pageants. That's what made the whole fuckin' thing so hilarious.

I love the host too. He just has this whole "what the fuck" look on his face during the whole performance. :rofl:

[murielm99]

76. I love that movie!

[Skittles]

37. absolutely sick in every way

[Arkansas Granny]

38. Creepy as hell. Seeing what some of those mothers are willing to do

to make their little girls look like hookers is just unbelievable.

[graywarrior]

39. Sick

[Jamastiene]

41. Caaaaa-reepy as hell

It's just fodder for child molesters to watch...like moths to a flame.

[tigereye]

42. creepy

I can't think about them without thinking about Little Miss Sunshine...

[MineralMan]

44. For many of these kiddie pageant, the beat goes on

into their high school years. My wife and I were coming back from Thanksgiving in California two years ago. At the airport, there was a mom, dad, a young girl, and a girl that looked about 16 or so. The teenager was holding a bunch of roses and was wearing one of those beauty pageant sash thingies. At the freaking airport, catching a plane back to Minnesota!

I was fascinated with this whole thing, so I wrote down the name on the sash. Can't remember it just now, exactly, but it was something like Miss Teen American Beauty.

So, when we got home, I googled it. Sure enough...I found the pageant's site, along with links to other pageantry sites. Found out the girl's name and where she was from, too. So, I googled her name, which took me to some beauty pageant magazine, where there was an interview with her from another pageant, where she had won Miss Teenage Beauty or something like that.

Her life goal, as expressed in the interview, was to become a beauty contest coach or a cosmetologist.

It all seemed so sad to me. Her family trots her around from one contest to another, all of which must cost a fortune, and her goal is to teach other girls how to do it or to work in a beauty parlor.

Very strange stuff.

[carlyhippy]

46. 2 nights ago there was a show on tlc on child beauty pagents, "little miss perfect" I think it was

I really get the feeling that these little girls are not out there because THEY want to be, seems like it's for the parents.

[Danger Mouse]

47. Creepy as all hell on a cracker.

[Xipe Totec]

48. I'll take creepy as hell for $1,000 Alec!

Answer is:

What are flesh peddling parents?

[seaker]

49. Disturbing

and they give me the creeps..:cry:

[Tommy_J]

52. Another vote for creepy

[timtom]

53. Absolutely creepy as hell!

Adults should let children be children.

[Midlodemocrat]

54. When TM was a baby, I got phone calls to do that.

Creepy as fucking Hell. Frankly, I feel that way about all beauty pageants. And, my girls are drop dead gorgeous.

[Montauk6]

56. I don't what's worse...

The out-and-out pedo factor or the abusive failed wannabe backstage parents.

[lady raven]

65. It's the parents.

My son took part in some pageants as a baby, like I said in another post. The kinds sponsored by the Lion's club and such that don't allow makeup or that other creepy shit. If I had a girl and showed up at a pageant, only to find out it was one of THOSE, I would walk out. A parent has the right AND the responsiblity to protect their child- The child's self esteem and character development AS WELL AS not putting them on display for pedophiles and whatnot.

These pageants are not for the kids. They are for the parents- Often failed beauty queens or parents who feel or felt unattractive who want to build themselves up by getting attention for having a pretty kid. OR parents who are using it for their own monetary gain. They are pimping their kids out, and frankly I think it's abuse.

Someone approached me about my twins when we were in a large city a handful of months ago. They gave me their card and wanted to get them into modeling or possibly television or movies. It was a legitimate agency. I tore up the card because I know that if I were to get them involved in that, they might never have a normal life. I am sure it would help our financial situation, which isn't great. But I refuse to exploit my own child for my own financial gain. Period.

I blame the parents 100%. They have the power not to participate and the responsibility to look after their kids' well being. Instead, they put their own egos or financial interests first and they ruin their kids for life.

[zanne]

57. It's like advertising to pedophiles...nt

[applegrove]

59. I think learning a skill like dancing or gymnastics is much better. It empahsizes

discipline not beauty. I think those pictures of jonbenet ramsay were so creepy. Kids shouldn't be wearing makeup like that.

[grace0418]

60. Creepy as hell doesn't even begin to describe them.

That's like saying George Bush isn't exactly a genius or Satan is a bit of a jerk.

[Aristus]

61. Read Harlan Ellison's essay "Our Little Miss" sometime. It was written in 1974.

Things have changed very little since then, I imagine...

These things are sick and disgusting, and so are the people who put them on and watch them.

[JCMach1]

62. Both I think- If they weren't fun (in a twisted sort of way)

Why would anyone do them... :shrug:

[ghostsofgiants]

63. Creepy as hell, for sure.

[lady raven]

64. Me too. Add sick and perverse

My son was in several pageants as a baby. They were the type sponsored by the Lions Club and such, where the kids were told to be "natural" and makeup, fake nails, and all that crap were strictly NOT allowed.

The other type of pageants- You know, the "JonBenet Ramsey" pageants- are just sick.

[jakefrep]

68. Creepy

It's a tolerable idea gone horribly wrong.

It may have been sorta cute at one time, but it's become too competitive and overblown for it's own good. Kiddie pageants have been coopted by people, that had they had boys, would certainly have been incorrigible little league parents.

[jmowreader]

70. Doesn't everything eventually become that?

Google "competitive eating" or "dB drag racing."

[jakefrep]

71. A lot of things, yes.

Some people just don't know when to stop.

[rucky]

69. Prostitots n/t

[Riden]

73. Definitely Prostitots

I don't even want to think about how early they're having sex...

[mvd]

74. Not only creepy and inappropriate, but bad for the kids

What a way to have them grow up. x(

[Zavulon]

75. Creepy as hell.

I remember once sitting in a hotel bar and one of those things was on. The comments from the assholes surrounding me were frightening.

I'd tell you a few of them, but my post would be promptly deleted, and rightfully so. Stomach-turning stuff.