L I FESTY L E & L E I S U R E
beauty pageants Are Parents Bullying Their Children – By Accident? by Mark Bello
Lipstick,
fake eyelashes, flippers, big hairdos, tanning, and sparkly crowns...it’s the world of beauty pageants. We have all heard of them, maybe even watched an episode or two of “Toddlers & Tiaras” or “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” Beauty pageant competitions for young children have been dominating the pageant market for many years, although most of us were unaware of them until the 1995 death of then-5-year-old beauty queen Jon-Benet Ramsey. A recent paper in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry looked at what motivates some parents to enter their children in high-glitz beauty pageants. Author Martina M. Cartwright, a registered dietitian and adjunct professor in the University of Arizona’s Department of Nutritional Sciences, suggests that, “highglitz child pageants, largely popularized by the TLC hit reality show ‘Toddlers & Tiaras’ and its spin-off, ‘Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,’ often have little to do with the children and much more to do with satisfying the needs of their parents.”