What Are the Dangers of Child Beauty Pageants?

Child Beauty Pageants Place Too Much Emphasis on Looks

• Although there are other components to child beauty pageants such as talent and poise, the majority of the emphasis is on looks. Children who are judged based on their looks may be vulnerable to placing undue emphasis on looks as they mature. Some successful pageant children may not grow up to be good-looking adults by prevailing social standards, and adjusting to those differences might negatively affect their self-esteem. Also, pageant children may not be used to cultivating other aspects of themselves that do not relate to their looks and may have a problem adjusting to society as adults.

Child Beauty Pageants Can be Detrimental to Children's Growth

• Child beauty pageants can lead to physical ailments when children cannot adjust to living outside of the norms of the pageant world. This adjustment usually has to take place in their teenage years and it is then that children are susceptible to eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, and even to psychiatric conditions such as depression.

Child Beauty Pageants Can Rob Children of their Childhood

• All the work that goes into preparing for, traveling, and competing in child beauty pageants can rob children of some of the precious time they have to just be children. Beauty pageants put adult pressures on young children. When children compete all the time, they lose the sense of fun and inquisitiveness and wonder that comes with childhood and are thrust into adult situations too quickly. Some mothers of child beauty contestants also live vicariously through their children and may place unrealistic demands on those children to live lives that they themselves cannot.

Child Beauty Pageants are Costly

• Child beauty pageants are costly. The costumes, pageant fees, travel, and other associated fees all add up. By some estimates, pageant gowns can cost between $100 to $200, and even up to $1,000, and given that the average child competing in pageants enters an average of five a year, the costs can really add up.