I'm done!!

It's far from perfect, but it is a draft, so I guess it doesn't have to be. Here it is...

The Dallas Morning News
Dallas, TX
The Living China Dolls
to mothers in Dallas and Texas
First Draft

It is a well-known fact that beauty pageants have become a means for celebrating beauty. Beauty pageants can give women, and more recently girls, an excuse to make themselves look as beautiful as they can and win prizes for their looks. However, there may be more behind beauty pageants than innocent fun and joy in beauty.
First of all, the beauty being celebrated in child beauty pageants in particular is not real. The beauty of a girl is found in her real eyes, her real teeth, her real hair, her real lips, and her real self. This is the beauty a mother sees in her daughter, and this is the beauty that may lead mothers to enter their daughter(s) in beauty pageants. In these beauty pageants, a whole different beauty is exalted. This beauty is found in man-made things. Girls are plastered with lipstick, mascara, blush and eyeshadow. Sometimes even spray tans are used. If a young girl’s baby tooth falls out at an inconvenient time and doesn’t have time to grow back in before a pageant, a fake tooth is fitted. Or say a girl’s hair isn’t yet long enough to “curl like Barbie’s.” Bring on the hair extensions. All this can take about 2.5 hours to do. In the end, the girls’ natural beauty is being stifled by cosmetics.
Secondly, child beauty pageants can be used to exploit these child beauties. As we saw in the murder of child beauty pageant queen, JonBenet Ramsey, child beauty pageants are screaming for sex-offenders to come and “choose a girl.” Names, cities, states and ages are all given when the contestants are introduced. As disgusting as it is, it’s true. There’s nothing stopping people with sick minds from following a family home from a pageant and violating their daughter. Child beauty pageants can also induce child abuse. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act defines child abuse as, “the physical or mental injury, sexual abuse or exploitation of a child under circumstances which indicate the child’s health or welfare is harmed or threatened.” Could parents be exploiting their child’s beauty, simply for their own pleasure or gain? It is very possible. As one mother stated at a beauty pageant, “My daughter looks like Barbie. I tell her to exploit it. This is you life; take what you have and run with it.” This mom seems to be leading her daughter to ruin. Not only is the mother exploiting her daughter, but she is teaching her daughter to exploit herself. What will become of daughters who go around, believing they have everything they need in their appearance? It’s too awful even to imagine.
Lastly, some parents believe they are helping their children become more confident by entering them in beauty pageants. But whose self-esteem is really being boosted here? It is true that shy children may be helped by meeting new people at these child beauty pageants. However, many pageants have about 120 contestants, so thrusting a 2-year-old girl who is nervous when one new person enters her home into a crowd of 119 other 2-6-year-olds, plus their parents and siblings, will more likely frighten her and introvert her even more. Worse than this, these girls are becoming sickeningly dependent on their appearances to get them through the rest of their lives. When girls 8-10 were interviewed by the A&E Network, not one of them was concerned about their future schooling. Each one planned on going into modeling. But according to the Better Business Bureau, few child pageant winners are actually able to get modeling jobs when they mature. These child beauties are being fed false hopes and dreams. The effects can be devastating. “Being a little Barbie doll says your body has to be a certain way and your hair has to be a certain way,” says William Pinsof, a clinical psychologist and the president of the Family Institute at Northwestern University, “In girls particularly, this can unleash a whole complex of destructive self-experiences that can lead to eating disorders and all kinds of body distortions in terms of body image.” So not only could girls end up throwing their lives away in a wild goose chase, but they could destroy themselves doing it.


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