History of Child Beauty Pageants
The birth and growth of beauty pageants for children has been an evolution throughout the years. Hilary Levey Friedman, a researcher in the field of history of beauty pageants wrote the article "The Evolution of American-Style Child Beauty Pageants." She tells that in 1881 a British art critic, John Ruskin, had the idea of holding a May Queen Festival to celebrate the innocence of children. This festival embellished young girls and honored their childish figures. It was held in England but soon traveled across seas to America. As the festivals continued they started to change into baby parades and Better Baby contests. The ‘perfect baby contests’ judged the infants based on physical standards of perfection. An expert in the field, Annette Dory, explains the judging of these babies. She says that the infants would be totally naked while physicians would take certain measurements to judge and award the baby with the most perfect body dimensions (Friedman para 3,4,7,8). Other contests were judged based on appearance and costumes. By 1923 it was recorded that young girls were dressing in sensualized costumes. “A three-year-old girl won in a harem costume, a two-year-old won as a ‘Vanity Girl,’ and a six-year-old won dressed like a ‘Show Girl’ ” which drew the attention of crowds reaching into the thousands (Friedman para 6). If having children dressed as little 'strippers' helped shape the popularity of beauty pageants, I wonder if this trend in costumes was one of the major reasons for the incline of viewers of these scandalous competitions. As these contests became more and more popular they shifted into beauty pageants that took place all across the nation.
Although these parades, contests, and pageants started way before the twenty-first century, there is a lack of solid scientific evidence that shares the emotional and physical turmoil of the children that participated. Instead, firsthand accounts and stories are shared to reveal some problems that have arisen from these pageants in the past. The Chief of Preschool Division of Pennsylvania’s Division of Health said in 1932 "deplorable exploitation of childhood". Society also began to attack the idea of these contests saying that these children were being sexualized (Friedman para 12). The use of these children as things to glorify and see as sexual items could only have taken the innocence and childhood away from the contestants. Other stories travel through families. The author Martina M. Cartwright, Ph.D., R.D. who published "Princess by Proxy: Explaining Extreme Pageant Moms" in Psychology Today told stories of now adult pageant children and how it affected their lives. Karen Kataline was one of the post pageant contestants that was interviewed by Cartwright. Karen grew up in beauty pageants in the 1960s while her mom also was a tot beauty queen in the 1930s. Her mother continued her beauty pageant dreams by putting Karen into the pageants as a toddler. Karen explains how she grew up on a ‘low calorie diet’ as a child to maintain the perfect body for the pageants. She did not understand it until she was a teenager that she had no passion for the pageants, but it was her mother that did (Cartwright para 4, 5). This is just one story of the past expectations that society had for their little baby beauty queens. What happens to the pageant children like Karen? I think today's society views beauty differently than that of the previous generations. As the years progressed the views of beauty have changed but the beauty pageants still push the exemplary looks of the young dolls
Although these parades, contests, and pageants started way before the twenty-first century, there is a lack of solid scientific evidence that shares the emotional and physical turmoil of the children that participated. Instead, firsthand accounts and stories are shared to reveal some problems that have arisen from these pageants in the past. The Chief of Preschool Division of Pennsylvania’s Division of Health said in 1932 "deplorable exploitation of childhood". Society also began to attack the idea of these contests saying that these children were being sexualized (Friedman para 12). The use of these children as things to glorify and see as sexual items could only have taken the innocence and childhood away from the contestants. Other stories travel through families. The author Martina M. Cartwright, Ph.D., R.D. who published "Princess by Proxy: Explaining Extreme Pageant Moms" in Psychology Today told stories of now adult pageant children and how it affected their lives. Karen Kataline was one of the post pageant contestants that was interviewed by Cartwright. Karen grew up in beauty pageants in the 1960s while her mom also was a tot beauty queen in the 1930s. Her mother continued her beauty pageant dreams by putting Karen into the pageants as a toddler. Karen explains how she grew up on a ‘low calorie diet’ as a child to maintain the perfect body for the pageants. She did not understand it until she was a teenager that she had no passion for the pageants, but it was her mother that did (Cartwright para 4, 5). This is just one story of the past expectations that society had for their little baby beauty queens. What happens to the pageant children like Karen? I think today's society views beauty differently than that of the previous generations. As the years progressed the views of beauty have changed but the beauty pageants still push the exemplary looks of the young dolls