Toddlers And Tiaras Rhetorical Analysis

Have you ever watched the show "Toddlers and Tiaras" before? To sum up "Toddlers and Tiaras" it's a TV show that gives us a view on how child beauty pageants really are. The author of the article "Toddlers and Tiaras" Skip Hollandsworth is an award winning journalist who is currently the executive editor in Texas Monthly Magazine. Hollandsworth uses a lot of ethos, pathos and logos throughout the article to prove his point, which is how child beauty pageants are affecting little girls (around the age of six years old) mentally. Ethos means credibility, Pathos means to produce emotion and finally Logos means logic or facts. Throughout the article Hollandsworth explains and describes how these "beauty pageants" are affecting little girls (around the age of six) mentally and how they become insecure of themselves.

In the article, Hollandsworth mentions how psychotherapist Nancy Irwin (who is specialized working with sexually abused teenage girls) believes that the pageants girls are their mothers tools just to get attention and fame.

Nancy Irwin states in Hollandsworths article that "these little girls [around the age of six years old] are trained to look and act like sexual bait" (quoted in Hollandsworth 493) . Hollandsworth also mentions how Irwin was in beauty pageants as a teenager and as a young adult, but she competed in them to get scholarship money. Irwin worries that mothers order their children to be in beauty pageants and its true because in the show "Toddlers and Tiaras" the mothers are the ones that seem to want to win the prize more than their child. Ethos was used in this section of the article because Hollandsworth showed credibility by including Irwin (the psychotherapist) in his article. By Hollandsworth adding professional people in his article and explaining their degree makes his work more

credible.

When watching "Toddlers and Tiaras" it makes you wonder how mothers can put their little girls (around six years old) under so much pressure and stress. In the show the toddlers break down in tears because they lost the pageant or they feel very pressured. Some of them don't even like doing pageants. When watching and reading the article "Toddlers and Tiaras" it makes the audience feel many emotions such as pity, sadness and anger. Hollandsworth used pathos throughout the article because when reading, the audience (reader) feels pity and sadness. In the beginning of the article Hollandsworth states " six year old Eden Wood is perched on a stool, quietly staring at herself in a lighted mirror, waiting for the transformation to begin" (Hollandsworth 490) the audience might feel sadness because of what that six-year-old is going through which is watching herself get transformed into a completely different person. Six year old kids shouldn't be going through that, they shouldn't be wearing makeup or getting their hair damaged by hair products. Pathos were used in the quote to make us feel pity towards Eden because no six-year-old should be going through that. It also makes the audience (readers) feel anger that a mother is letting their daughter go through this superficial change at such a young age.

Hollandsworth uses a lot of Logos throughout the article, he stated facts and statistics, which made the article more credible. There was a study done 10 years ago that was published, Hollandsworth states in his article that "A small 2005 study, published in Eating Disorder: The Journal of Treatment and Prevention …But it did find that the former pageant girls scored significantly higher on body dissatisfaction…" (Hollandsworth 493) basically girls who are in pageants have self-image issues and feel self-conscious. Little girls shouldn't feel self-conscious at six years old they shouldn't even be worried about their body at that age. Sadly the study showed that most of those little girls in the pageants are insecure about themselves. By Hollandsworth using Logos in his article makes the audience know how serious pageants are affecting these little six year olds mental health.

Overall beauty pageants are something you don't want to put your children (little girls around the age of six) through. It affects the girls in so many ways, either mentally and emotionally, they're too young to be stressing over a tiara. Hollandsworth uses a lot of Logos, Pathos and Ethos to get his point across which would be the negative effects beauty pageants have on toddlers. Hopefully when parents read the article they become aware of what beauty pageants do to your children.