Sexualization Of Beauty Pageants

One main issue seen within social media is over sexualization of women and teens. Young girls tend to look up to celebrities they see within magazines or social media, the issue with this is these celebrities are being digitally transformed to fit societies “norms”. These images put unrealistic thoughts in girls heads that they must look the same as the girls in magazines or other social media. This will cause them to take extreme measures to achieve their goal. Jessica Bennett, Newsweek: How our obsession with beauty is changing our kids, states that “ fourth graders are in the market for lush $50 haircuts; by the time they hit high school, $150 highlights are standard. Five-year olds have spa days and pedicure parties. And instead of shaving

Beauty pageants also encourage young girls in a negative way by adding the pressures of beauty at the ages of four and five years old. The famous TLC show “Toddler and Tiaras’” influences millions of young girls to start beauty treatments at a young age so they can feel as beautiful as the girls that are their age on tv who are competing for beauty. (Triggs, People Magazine) Young girls who are put through these tv show beauty pageants also have issues such as they do not want to wear all the make up or the costumes. In multiple episode viewers will see how the young girls will state that they no longer want to do the beauty pageants, but their parents make them, or that they do not feel “pretty” without all of the make up.( Triggs, People Magazine) The fact that young girls are already feeling the pressure to be “beautiful” at such a young age launches them into the different psychological and body image issues as they

The issue with this logic is the fact most of the girls who are entered into beauty pageants have been doing them since they were between the ages of five to eleven years old. Therefore being in beauty pageants at a young age into adulthood may cause body image issues, such as not having realistic views of what beauty is, “young girls learn that they will not be able to win unless they have a certain figure, which could eventually develop into a potential eating disorder or have body-image issues”. (Giroux,PBS. Web. 19) Another issue with girls being in pageants for many years they may not feel beautiful unless they have loads of make up on. Others will go to extreme measures to keep their figures as they get older, which can lead to anorexia, bulimia, or other body dimorphic disorders. Even though these young girls do feel a form of beauty because of their time in pageants does not mean they truly sense what real beauty is like. In fact most of these young girls who turn into teens and eventually mature into young adults will be more likely to get plastic surgeries, or other forms of medical procedures to keep up with new beauty trends; this is an unhealthy and unrealistic view of beauty. Instead of encouraging this unhealthy behavior to keep up these young girls “looks” for beauty pageants, mothers should be