Lauren Lascano
Mr. Hernandez
January 20th
Period 7
For as long as people can remember, beauty pageants have existed in some shape or form. Whether it’s an official event or just a seemingly harmless game between a group of people, beauty pageants base their winners off of the person’s looks, height, and weight, which most of the time people find themselves the most self conscious about. Beauty pageants use other people’s insecurities and fears about themselves for the benefit of making money. As if that fact wasn't bad enough, mothers are now getting their daughters to participate in these events, claiming the competition is good for their developing brains. News flash - it isn’t. Now the exploitation is spreading to girls that can barely walk yet, pitting themselves against one another and they don’t even understand why it’s happening.
At the age of 5, you were probably playing outside or color pictures outside the lines. For most people in the beauty pageant industry, by that age you would have had 2 or more years of pageant experience. Although beauty pageants are seemingly harmless and just provokes the competitive side of women, it should not be welcomed to young girls at such a young age. Along with practically ripping their youth from them, beauty pageants set their own definition of what is beautiful, which permanently alters their future outlook in life. Even though it may not seem like it, forcing little girls to put on heaps of makeup and wear uncomfortable, heavy dresses for hours at a time serves as a form of abuse to these girls. Their mothers might also choose to live their dreams out through their daughters, causing them stress and working them until they physically are unable to.
Most beauty pageants are for women, and the idea of lowering the age for these competitions did not come until very recently. These events are also very damaging to self esteem, considering the extreme regulations that need to be met before you can even think about applying for one. Beauty pageants are competitions on physical appearance, it is difficult to join one especially since they have their own definition of what is beautiful. As normal people, we usually based beauty on not only on the outer beauty of people but also on the inner beauty.Sadly, this is not the case in these events. More importance is put on how you look in a dress and how well you can carry yourself, which obviously is not the right way to go about it. This can be a setback to young girls wanting to join beauty pageants because in a way, these pageants are discriminatory to others. Therefore, if they do not meet the regulations, they go their whole life trying to meet them and feeling horrible about themselves if they don’t. This is the ultimate goal for the people hosting and judging these pageants; they want everyone to strive to meet their impossible regulations by buying their products, therefore making them a lot of money. The regulations to be able to join a pageant are...
