Proposal

Exploring Children’s Beauty Pageants

For Project Three I plan to research children’s beauty pageants. I want to explore what the children go through in order to compete in these pageants. Shows like Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC promotes child beauty pageants and shows what goes on behind the scenes of the pageants. I want to find information that supports the idea of banning or changing pageants like the ones the girls are participating in on TLC.

I expect to find information that discusses the training and makeovers that the young girls go through. Just from viewing the Toddlers and Tiaras show several times, viewers can see that the girls go through hours of preparation and stress before the show. I want to see how this stress that is created affects the children’s lives. I want to also research other pageants for children that are based more on the natural beauty of children and not the “fake” look. By researching other pageants, this will hopefully give me an idea of ways to change the pageants and regulate the beauty enhancers the children can use. For example, children should not be judged on how tan they are and therefore, spray tans and tanning should be banned from beauty pageants for children. Other rules should also limit the amount of coaching the girls go through before the actual pageant.
     In addition to researching what goes on in the preparation stage for the beauty pageants, I also want to investigate the categories the children are judged. Certain categories were created originally for teenagers or young adults and children should not be held to the same standards. I want to find categories that are age appropriate and can be completed by the children and not what their parents do for them. The categories that are judged in the pageants put a lot of emphasis on the way the young girls look. This puts a lot of pressure on them and can affect other aspects in their life. Through research, I hope to investigate how extreme the effects are and if there is anything pageant officials can do to change how much emphasis is put on image.

After completing Project Three, I hope to have expanded my knowledge of beauty pageants for children. Through research, I will also learn more about how the children and their families are effected by the training and actual pageants. I also hope to find a way to make child pageants more ethical and age appropriate for the young girls that participate in them every year.