Subscribe"They wore the latest colors of lipstick and matching eyeliner. Some had fake hair and even fake teeth. They pranced on stage in sequined gowns and rhinestone-studded jeans.
Occasionally there was a problem. One girl in a pink sequined dress began to cry. The tears carried streaks of mascara down her face. Her mother grabbed her and tried to get the girl to stop crying. When she didn’t stop, her mother dragged her off the stage by the hand.
Meanwhile, an unfazed announcer told the audience that the girl was 2 years old, from Massachusetts, and her life’s ambition is to bring happiness to all who come into contact with her.
The girl stopped crying and began to eat Cheerios with the other beauty-pageant contestants. Her mother began laying out her rhinestone-studded jeans for the next phase of the competition – modeling." [Harvard University Gazette | June 08, 2000]
"Pageants can be costly. Entry fees range from $100 to $200; there are travel expenses; a pageant dress can easily cost $150--or sometimes as much as $1,000--and the more competitive parents also invest in makeup and hair stylists (used by about 40 percent of entrants), wigs, false teeth to cover gaps from missing baby teeth, and beauty pageant 'coaches.' (Embellishments like the false teeth and hair indicated that the contests 'weren't just judging natural beauty,' Levey says.) One subject told her, 'I know people who have spent so much on pageants, they have lost their [house] trailers.'
The payoff, many parents say, is that their children learn social skills--interacting with others, making friends, not being shy....One mother declared, 'Competition is very healthy. It's the problem with today's educational system: there is none of it. We need competition to keep the idiots out of the workforce (emphasis added).' [Harvard Magazine | January 2001]
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posted by sharksandwich at 2:58 PM on July 9, 2005