Pageant Moms

Beauty Pageants have been around longer than the students and faculty at West Virginia University. Along with beauty pageants, there is always what people call the “pageant moms”. Everyone has seen or heard of them, for example, the mothers that are waiting right off stage to inform their painted face daughters of how horrible of a job they did, and watches the other girls with a close eye so she knows just what she is up against, notice I said, what she is up against, not the daughter. It seems as if these pageant moms are in the pageants themselves, not their daughters. In this research essay, I plan to reveal how much of a negative effect pageant moms do have on their daughters, and how the label “pageant moms” fits their type very well. How their type can literally cause serious problems for their daughters later, whether or not they may have won their pageants, when they get older they will think back and wonder why they were never good enough for their mother. I set out to prove that, not only are “pageant moms” completely obsessive, overbearing, perfectionist, but they are also helping to destroy their daughter’s lives, values, and morals along the

An estimated three million children and young adults participate in pageants, and half of them are under the age of twelve. (Taken from Little Girls…Lots of Makeup) Yet another interesting fact, “Dateline NBC ran a poll where 62% of those questioned said parents benefit more from child beauty pageants, where only 3% said that children do benefit” (Little Girls…Lots of Makeup). Beginning with the first stat, the positive view, half of them are over twelve. Which is, yes a very good thing. But the half that is under twelve, is the half that cant understand why they weren’t good enough to win the crown, they cant deal well with their mother yelling at them to do this and that better, and deal with having a vast audience staring at them, along with trying to remember fifteen dance routines, what pose to do in what corner of the modeling T, and remember to smile, and how to answer the interview question correctly. It’s just to much, plain and simple. Not only when that young child looses the competition, and feels sad and wonders why she didn’t win, but when her mother also yells at her, and tells her how horrible it was and how she could have won, it can cause a lot of serious psychological problems for the child, like eating disorders, depression, and on. The half that is over twelve, still have to deal with all the pressure, from their overbearing “pageant mom”, if they were blessed to have one, note the sarcasm, the routines, and the audience, but they are becoming old enough to realize that pageants aren’t everything. That pageants shouldn’t be their life, and if they haven’t learned that by then, the pressures from when they were in the half that was under twelve, apparently carried over till now when they are in the half that is over twelve. With the second stat, it completely proves my paper. “Pageant Moms” do benefit more from child beauty pageants. If the children are young, someone from the audience may tell them they are pretty or cute, but the mom is the one they will give the glory to, for the simple fact the younger the girl, the less they really understand. So of course mom gets the glory from that aspect. If the child is older, and is competing for a scholarship, of course the contestant wins, she gets to go to college, but the mother does benefit more, because that’s a thousand dollars that she doesn’t have to pay, or fill out papers for her daughter to go to college. From every aspect, a “pageant mom” isn’t a positive thing, from having negative effects on their daughters, spending tons of the family money, to reaping all the benefits and glory for her. It’s an ugly situation, and will keep escalating until mothers should be ban from the pageants, but that wont happen, or by making enough people aware, that when they see such accounts as mentioned above, they don’t just watch, they say something. And if it is seen, report it to a pageant director, who can take appropriate measures toward punishment, banning them from that specific pageant, or asking the mother to maybe leave.

Many of the pageant contestants and their mothers say that the pageants judge more on poise and personality, but one might question this. If the pageants are judged more on poise and personality why does the pageant industry rake in approximately a billion dollars every year? (Passmore) And why do families spend thousands of dollars on dresses, makeup, jewelry, fake tans, and hair appointments, if I knew I was being judged on my personality and how I hold myself, I doubt very seriously if I would spend thousands of dollars to make myself be “beautiful.” From a first hand account, each pageant contestant usually only answers one question from the judges, the rest of the time is spent modeling, so in this short amount of time, exactly how easy can it be for a judge to decide, “that girl right there has a great personality”, it goes more along the lines of, “that girl right there is beau

Some topics in this essay:
Makeup Beginning, Staten Island, Quanita Williams, Pageants Exposed, JonBenet Ramsey, Virginia University, America America, Miss McKinney, Collins-Albanese Avery, Girls…Lots Makeup, “pageant moms”, beauty pageants, pageant moms, half twelve, beauty pageants exposed, pageants themselves, didn’t win, pageants exposed, fulfilling experience, judged appearance, poise personality, child beauty pageants, spend thousands dollars, pageants themselves maybe, reason pageant moms,