The French senate voted to ban beauty pageants for kids under the age of 16 on Sept. 17 with a vote of 196 to 146, according to BBC. The reason behind this is that lawmakers in France claim that child pageants hypersexualize girls at a young age. “We are talking about children who are only being judged on their appearance, and that is totally contrary to the development of a child,” the French amendment’s author, Chantal Jouanno, told The Associated Press.
Child beauty pageants are a phenomena that started in the United States in 1921 and have been drastically widespread throughout the world in the past few years. Now there are even television shows in the U.S. that feature child beauty pageants, such as Toddlers & Tiaras and King of the Crown. “Several documentaries about child beauty pageants in America have shocked the French in recent years. The phenomenon is largely viewed as a sordid offshoot of American culture,” said NPR’s Eleanor Beardsley. Pageants in France are significantly less frequent and less intense than in the United States and France has no equivalent of American reality shows like Toddlers & Tiaras that include very young contestants.
I agree with France’s decision of banning child beauty pageants, and I believe that the United States should implement the same law. Such pageants are contests based on shallow and superficial morals, where children’s physical appearances are used to win prizes and money. While children at that age should be taught morals and meaningful knowledge that shape their personality and make them beneficial members of the community, child beauty pageants teach them to focus on trivial and superficial things such as looks. It is morally unacceptable to sexualize girls at this age by letting them wear tight clothes, high heels, heavy makeup and jewelry that are not appropriate for their age to make them look like adults. Some girls even get spray tanned, wear hair extensions, fake eyelashes and flippers to replace missing baby teeth.
Children that participate in such beauty pageants are exposed to an atmosphere different from the conventional atmosphere where children are raised, an atmosphere where they act like grown-ups by modeling and dressing as adults. Instead, they should be acting their age and doing what they enjoy in ordinary child activities.
It is not always the child’s decision to participate in these beauty pageants. Sometimes the parents are the ones who decide for their children, and the children are too young to refuse. “There are examples of young girls screaming in terror as their mothers approach them with spray cans,” Australian lawmaker Anna Burke told the Sydney Daily Telegraph. On the other hand, even if it is the children’s decision to participate, they are not old enough to make their own decision since they can’t weigh the consequences of the decisions.
Participating in such beauty pageants has harmful effects on children. Most of the beauty products young girls in beauty pageants use are not designed for children, which can harm their sensitive skin and hair. For example, hair spray, which contains phthalates or plasticizers, can act as hormone disruptors, as Travis Stork of CBS’s The Doctors reported. High heels are not appropriate for children either. According to Wen-Yin Choi, doctor of podiatric medicine, a board-qualified podiatrist, the unnatural position of their feet can directly cause or contribute to temporary problems like calluses or more long-term damage to posture.
Aside from the physical effects, child beauty pageants also have negative psychological effects on children who participate in them. According to a 2007 report by the American Psychological Association, the hypersexualization of young girls is strongly associated with eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression.
The negative effects affiliated with child beauty pageants don’t only influence children who participate in them but also those who watch them. At such a young age, children easily get influenced by what surrounds them. The spread of child beauty pageants and television shows that feature them draws excessive attention to physical looks instead of genuine qualities. When young girls notice how such shows give attention and value to girls with good looks, they will feel the urge to receive the same attention. Also, it will instinctively cause girls to compare themselves to the contestants, and if a girl thinks she lacks some of the qualities these contestants have or that she is not as pretty as they are, she will lose her self-esteem and feel like she is not good enough. Also, the fact that children in beauty pageants use makeup and fake hair, nails and teeth, distorts the concept of beauty by giving girls the impression that beauty depends on makeup and synthetic things rather than natural beauty.
Child beauty pageants give children the wrong morals and spread unethical principles in the community as a whole by drawing attention to superficial aspects such as looks. The money, effort and resources that are spent on such pageants and TV shows can be directed to other projects that would be more beneficial to the community and welfare of the people. Instead of wasting resources on hypersexualizing children, these resources can be spent on other children who need more vital and urgent things such as food and clothes.
Rawan Elzayat can be reached at rawan.elzayat@spartans.ut.edu