“Vanity Gone Bad”

There is a disturbing psychosis running rampant among many of our citizens which involved many of them engaging in anything for Andy Warhol’s fifteen minutes of fame.  Among these fame seekers, there is none more despicable than those parents who allowed their children to enter into these children’s beauty pageants. These pageants should be memorialized on the pages of dictionaries as the paradigm for child exploitation and abuse. The makeup and costumes, which these children are forced to wear, amount to nothing but the sexualizing of children - some of whom are only five years old. Moreover, these pageants are fodder for pedophiles that happen to see them.

All those involved in putting together these children’s pageants are all culpable, but none more so than the parents. Where are these fathers and the social agencies? On one VH1 episode, there was even one parent who had her little boy dressed up, à la cross dressing, and had her son enter the girl’s pageant - mom’s excuse was that the boy always wanted to be a girl. What is particularly heart wrenching is the sight of seeing some of these children crying… apparently not wanting to take part in the pageant, but having their parents coaxing them to enter.  For those children who placed in the competition, one could see that it is the parents who were enjoying the win because most of the children were uninterested about the placement of winners or first runner ups….

I wonder if there are psychological studies on how these pageants affect these children in their teenage or adult years? If I had it my way, I would have the states criminalize all such pageants, which to me is akin to abuse and in addition, force these parents to enter treatment for what must be some sort of psychosis of vanity gone bad.