Child Beauty Pageants: Exploitive Sexualisation or Just a Sparkly Day Out?

Fake teeth, false eyelashes, manicured brows, spray tan and a pout - it sounds like Kim Kardashian and Marty Morrissey are having a spa day. But the reality is something much more difficult for me to wrap my head around. Yes, we are going through the looking glass to the world of children’s beauty pageants.

These competitions have long been part of the American Beauty Dream but last month saw Texas-based Universal Royalty roll in to Ireland. This is the company featured in the toothtastic, tantrum that is “Toddlers and Tiaras”. Watching that programme is like hitting myself repeatedly across the head with a baseball bat - I’m not sure why I am doing it but it feels great when I stop.

About 20 orange contestants made their way to a bar in Monaghan to compete after their first choice venue in Balbriggan, Co. Dublin cancelled the event.

Annette Hill of Universal Royalty was at pains to point out to us that this pageant would be geared towards Irish tastes and there would be no swimwear round. Which I think is great because parading around a pub in Monaghan in your rhinestone bikini is a very depressing thought, regardless of the age of the model. The high point of that particular career path is wearing a black corset on the front page of the Sunday Indo magazine.

Eden Wood, the star of child pageants in America, and her mama appeared on the Late Late Show before the Monaghan clash of the ringlets. The child had been drilled in what to say and sounded like Honey Boo Boo’s older sister - all purty hair and precocious patter.

Also in attendance on Ryan’s couch was Aisling Murphy, a nine year old whose mother is from Cork. She has competed in just under twenty competitions in three years. Her mother, Stephanie, flew back from their new home of Townsville in northern Australia for the event. She admits to having spent over €50,000 in the past three years on these pageants. So that’s how much a ticket costs to this Mad Hatter’s Sequin Tea Party.

Most little girls like to dress up and experiment with the make up box. But there is a huge jump from innocent play to putting children under pressure to win a competition based solely on how good they look in a ridiculous outfit. We are encouraging them to be competitive and to judge others simply on how they look. It makes a child vulnerable to obsessing over their own physical appearance and isn’t our job to protect them from such anxieties?

The French parliament have moved to ban these pageants and Irish Senator Jillian van Turnhout is hoping we follow suit. She believes that these children are being pushed into “roles of seduction”.

Does she have a point, are these events blurring the line between childish charm and strained seduction? Are we rewriting their childhood fairytale to be Lolita in Wonderland?

If I ever have a daughter, I want her to celebrate the best part of her body - her brain.

What do you think of these pageants? Are they exploiting and sexualising children or just harmless, glittery fun?