Beauty Enhancement

This photo displays how these children use enhancements to fit beauty ideals displayed in our media. This little girl has been photo shopped and airbrushed to achieve this beauty. 

http://www.celebitchy.com/208942/toddlers_tiaras_moms_get_pageant_makeovers_they_say_dance_moms_are_mean/

Toddlers and Tiaras is a hit television series that is based on toddlers enhancing their beauty by competing in beauty pageants all over the globe. These toddlers are dressed up in fancy dresses costing sometimes over 1500 dollars to make sure they have the best dresses to look the most beautiful for the fiercest competition. These toddlers age 15 months and up and use many cosmetic products to enhance their beauty. Fake tans are one of the many enhancements these toddlers use for competitions. Toddlers who don’t use these tans loose points because they aren’t considered as beautiful with pale skin tones. Also these children use fake hair extensions and hair pieces to create luscious hair, without these enhancements children will lose points and may cause them to lose the competition. In addition flippers are used which are a set of fake teeth for those toddlers who are missing teeth. All of these enhancements are essential to have in these pageants and without them could cause these children to lose.

There is great controversy when it comes to these pageants, because they are said to be setting bad examples for these young children. The enhancements of their beauty are taught to them to be essential for competition and are also taught to be used daily so that they are considered beautiful to the media. At such a young age one has to wonder if the child even wants to be involved in these pageants. Parents I feel are using their children to relive their childhood by using their children as the object. Interviews with moms state they were bullied as a child for not being beautiful, and are using pageantry to make sure their child doesn’t face these struggles and have confidence. “A mom defends her eight year-old daughter’s weight loss and admits that she used to weigh 300 pounds (Celebichy, 2012). This is an example of a mom who struggled with feeling beautiful as a child and wants to make sure her daughter doesn’t suffer life she did, and uses pageants as a way to give her daughter confidence. Pageants can be argued as beneficial to the Childs self-esteem at a young age can help children. Moreover, giving your child the persona and identity you want for them isn’t fair because you are robbing them of discovering themselves and the true identity they believe in.

Pageants can also relate to killing us softly 4 where women are influenced by the media. The media influences them to enhance their beauty by using these products. Women are constantly being pressured to fit these ideals which creates these desires to fit the “perfect body,” to become beautiful.