In the August issue of Good
Housekeeping, we look at little girls in
beauty pageants on the occasion of what would have been JonBenet
Ramsay’s 21st birthday. We were especially interested in talking to
Peggy Orenstein to give us the big picture on princesses, pageant
queens, and how we’re raising (and failing) our girls
today.
It is difficult to ignore the
link between the flirtatious behavior exhibited by pint-size
contestants in heavy makeup (it's not uncommon for toddlers to
be encouraged to wink or blow kisses at the judges) and the naive
sexuality that is becoming increasingly blatant among elementary
school girls. Peggy Orenstein, who wrote about child beauty
pageants in her latest book,
Cinderella Ate My Daughter:
Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl
Culture, believes that pageant girls are being taught to see
themselves as objects of others' pleasure. "I'm not
saying that when they wiggle their hips and wink at judges at the
age of 4 or 5, they have any idea that what they're doing is a
highly eroticized, seductive gesture," she says. "But
pageant girls are definitely learning that if they act in a very
sexualized way, they will get attention. The risk is that as they
become adult women, they will continue to see their sexuality as a
performance and not something connected to their own true
feelings."
Related:
Behind the Scenes of a Child
Pageant
Whether it's a
5-year-old strutting down the pageant runway in lipstick and false
eyelashes, or the 7-year-olds who became a YouTube sensation for a
sexy Beyoncé "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" dance
routine, the fact that these young girls don't mean to be
sexual is actually part of the problem. When very young girls learn
to disconnect sexy motions from the thoughts and feelings behind
them, it's hard for them to integrate all of those elements as
they get older. Deborah Tolman, Ed.D., a professor at Hunter
College and author of
Dilemmas of Desire: Teenage Girls Talk
About Sexuality, says, "From
Toddlers &
Tiaras to
America's Next Top Model, reality TV
takes away a lot of what we know is good for girls. Focusing so
much on how you look is problematic. Instead of focusing on how she
feels — which is an important skill growing up — a girl learns to
sexualize herself. Your body is a compass, and premature sexuality
takes the arrow out of the compass."
"In 1996, when JonBenet
was murdered, it was shocking for us to see a 6-year-old wearing
lipstick and eye shadow," says Orenstein. "Now, market
research studies have found nearly half of today's 6- to
9-year-olds are already using lipstick or lip gloss. Walmart
launched a makeup line just for girls 8 to 12. Abercrombie &
Fitch marketed a padded push-up bikini top for 8-year-olds.
It's easy to slam pageants, but maybe that's because no one
wants to deal with the bigger picture, which is the day‑to‑day
sexualization of all our daughters."
Related:
Read
the Full Story of Toddlers in Tiaras
Perhaps it's precisely because sexy dress-up has gone
mainstream that Toddlers & Tiaras, the TLC
network's hit reality show about child pageants, draws 1.4
million viewers per week. Toddlers & Tiaras made Eden
Wood a star. The chubby-cheeked 6-year-old has more than 15,000
fans on her Facebook page, and there are nearly 700 YouTube videos
of her posing, prancing, or performing one of her talent routines:
a song-and-dance act in which she struts and swaggers, swings her
hips, flips her hair, coyly sticks her fingers in her dimpled
cheeks, and belts out lyrics in her untrained but very enthusiastic
voice.
The demands of pageant life can be relentless. Many of the girls
start competing as babies; some, like Eden, are homeschooled and
spend Fridays making all-day trips to pageants. The time devoted to
pageants is a developmental concern, says Northwestern's
Doheny: "On the most benign level, the girls who participate
in pageants truly limit the time they get to engage in playtime and
other creative endeavors, or to learn and practice other
competencies, like sports or personal relationships with
peers." The top girls on the pageant circuit not only have
hair and makeup stylists; they also have "beauty walk"
consultants and "talent" coaches.
-Photos by Dan Nelken
Click
here to see more images from our special report on child beauty
pageants.
Do you think our girls are oversexualized today?
More from Good
Housekeeping:
Reprinted with Permission of Hearst Communications, Inc.
Eden Wood, 6, in her room among her trophies
Mia Spargo, 4, before a pageant
Eden Wood getting encouragement from her mom
A young contestant practices her walk
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