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Let's Pull The Pin on Child Beauty Pageants

9/6/2011

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A couple of months ago Universal Royalty announced that they were heading to Australia. That's right, the company of 'Toddlers and Tiaras' fame decided that Australia needed to glitz up their kids, and they were the people to help!

But there was a strong voice of opposition in Australia, and many voiced outrage at the proposal. Catherine Manning founded Pull The Pin and rallies were held all around Australia to draw attention to the pageants and the the harm they cause. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists have backed calls for child beauty pageants to be banned, saying they encourage the sexualisation of children and can cause developmental harm. The chair of the college stated "We're giving these kids messages that how they appear, how they perform and standards about what they're to come up to is actually more important than what they're like inside."

Catherine is an Enlighten Education colleague of mine, and last week when Universal Royalty announced they were also New Zealand-bound, Catherine asked me to coordinate the Pull The Pin campaign in New Zealand. I felt honoured to be asked, and set up the Pull The Pin NZ facebook page.

We are campaigning to end all child beauty pageants in New Zealand. It is our view that pitting young girls against each other in a competition based on physical beauty is potentially harmful to their development, and can lead to lowered self esteem and other conditions including eating disorders and depression. We are also concerned with the adultification and sometimes sexualisation of pageant entrants, and their engagement in adult cosmetic treatments such as waxing and spray tanning. We are calling on the government to legislate to stop parents and pageant organisers from exploiting children by enforcing age restrictions on beauty pageants and adult cosmetic procedures (unless for medical reasons).

We will be co-ordinating public rallies once we have more information on when and where these pageants will be held.

It's been fantastic receiving so much support on this issue - it is definitely a topic that many New Zealanders feel strongly about!

New Zealand media coverage over the last couple of days:
  • Sunday Star Times 5/6/11  (I am quoted in this article)
  • TVNZ 9/6/11, by Vicki Wilkinson Baker
Enlighten Education's CEO Danielle Miller was interviewed this morning about the sexualisation of girls and the effect that child beauty pageants have:
And if you needed any more convincing that these pageants are NOT something we want to become a part of kiwi culture, check out this video featuring Universal Royalty's Eden Wood:
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Pre-teen Beauty Queens

25/6/2010

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Dressed in a slinky red evening gown with long blonde hair, lengthy dark eye-lashes, sultry eyes and immaculate make up, Sasha Bennington looks every bit the glamour model ready to strut down the catwalk or pose for a fashion magazine cover.   But Sasha is eleven; strip away the makeup and the sexy clothes, she is a little girl lost. 

Following on from Tuesday's 'Baby Beauty Queens' on 60 Minutes, last night 20/20 featured young Sasha and her family (from Manchester, UK).  They were interviewed about Sasha’s “career” and their aspirations for her. It was a disturbing episode.  With hundreds of dollars spent on her beauty regime every month, Sasha’s mother dreams of her daughter's future celebrity status – “I want Sasha to get every opportunity she can”.   She seems to pay her daughter the ultimate compliment as she describes her looking “like one of those little Cindy dolls you play with”.

After Sasha's mother described her daughter as confident and talented, when asked to describe herself, Sasha says “Three words to describe myself? – pretty, blonde, dumb... I am stupid”, followed by inane laughing of mother and daughter.  Sasha later points out that “I don’t need a brain”.

I acknowledge that such “current events” TV shows do often highlight the freaks and absurdities in our society, and I predict that the overwhelming majority of people who viewed this in NZ last night would share my views.  Examples such as Sasha Bennington are the extreme: However, for many girls and young women growing up today, there is a similar pressure to achieve the looks and body of the models that surround us in magazines, TVs and billboards.

It seems in many circles, the backlash against beauty contests, begun by the feminists in the 70s has well and truly turned full-circle.  With our society obsessed with reality TV shows, offering the average punter their chance of “fame” and “making it”, is it any wonder that we are now seeing a resurgence in the popularity of beauty contests? For parents, they are the ideal training ground for such shows as Next Top Model, Idol etc.  Sasha's take on it: “Like, 20 years ago, people cared about careers and stuff, but now it’s what you look like”.

Such child beauty contests have not made it to NZ (that I am aware of), but a part of me thinks it is only a matter of time.  I hope I am wrong.

In the words of Kahlil Gibran, “beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart”.  Child beauty pageants and all that surround them kill that light in the heart. 

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    Rachel is a writer and educator whose fields of interest include sexuality education, gender, feminism and youth development.

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