Negative Effects of Beauty Pegeants on Children

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Over that last 3 years, four-year-old Eden Wood has competed in child beauty pageants. Her parents have used more than 70,000 dollars for Eden to compete in these competitions; because of her winnings she has produced between 25,000- 30,000 dollars in prize money. She has yet to receive any of her prize money because her parents use it to invest in the pageant circuit. Eden loves pageants and competing in them, but her story leaves me speculating if she is too consumed in beauty pageants, and the negative effects they are having on her (Lieberman). Even though beauty pageants help promote personal development, confidence, and communication skills; pageants have negative social and psychological effects on children and teens. It causes early childhood stress and anxiety and parents are putting their kids through the pageants to make a profit off of them.
Children making money starting at the age of three reminds me of the children in third world countries that are forced by adults to work in factories. These children work for pennies a day, but unfortunately the children in these alleged pageants make large amounts of money that they never see. Pageant kids could most definitely use the money at another time in their lives to aide them through college or technical training. A pondering question when talking on this subject is; do any of the parents of these children have any college education? And if yes then; how much was their college expenses, and are they going to be saving for their children or make them pay for it later on when it could have been paid for possibly after one of the pageants.
A study done at the University of Minnesota evaluated the association between childhood beauty pageants and adult eating disorders, de...

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...ppease to audiences. I believe pageants are bad for children and young girls because of the severity it causes them with low self-esteem, and the pressure to be perfect.

Works Cited

Carrwright, Martina M. “Princess By Proxy: What Child Beauty Pageants Teach Girls About Self-Worth And What We Can Do About It. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 51.1 (2012): 1105-1107. Academic Search Complete. 3 Dec. 2013.
Lieberman, Lindsay. “Protecting Pageant Princesses: A Call for Statutory Regulation of Child Beauty Pageants.” Journal of Law & Policy 18.2 (2010): 739-774 Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
Wonderlich, Anna, Diann Ackard, and Judith Henderson. “Childhood Beauty Pageant Contestants: Associations with Adult Disordered Eating and Mental Health. Eating Disorder 13.1 (2012): 291-301. Academic Search Complete. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.

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