Although child pageantry has been around for decades, it was not in the main stream of public interest until the horrific date of December 26, 1996 when six year old Jon Benet Ramsey was found mutilated, sexually abused and murdered in her parents home. As the investigation grew, the curiosity of the public grew as people sat in front of their TV's watching clips of Jon Benet's pageantry days. There were clips of her dressed up like a show girl prancing around the stage blowing kisses to the audience, images of her airbrushed body in two piece bathing suits with high heels on, big hair and a face covered in makeup. Although the Ramsey case shed light on the negative side of child pageantry, it did not seem to halt parents from entering their children into beauty pageants, in fact, a new generation of pageant parents were taking it to a whole new level. Alarming statistics show that in 2010, "more than 5,000 child pageants are held annually in the U.S., amounting to a 5 billion dollar industry. Approximately 250,000 children participate in those pageants; 100,000 of them are under the age of 12" ("Child Beauty Pageants", 2010). .
The toy isle in any store isn't complete without an array of dress up play toys. This is a big part of symbolic play, especially for girls. Professor of Social work, Vernon R. Wiehe, explains that, "dress up, a sign of a child identifying with or mimicking the mother, is significantly different from organized child beauty pageants" (2014). Children in beauty pageants today are not just playing dress up with their mothers' old clothes. Today's parents who enroll their children into beauty pageants will do whatever it takes for their little princess to win, even if that means changing hair color, skin color, using false fingernails, bleaching of the teeth, wearing fake breasts and waxing their five year olds body to look sexier.