Looking Sexy Way Beyond Their Years
As a winner of countless little girls’ beauty pageants, including Little Miss Colorado, 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey had what pageant insiders knowingly call “the look.”
A cascade of blond hair. Bee-stung lips. Prominent cheekbones. Wide eyes, not unlike every female lead character in every recent Disney animated movie. (Belle, Jasmine, Ariel, Esmeralda--the list goes on and on.)
But more than just looks, JonBenet had that indefinable “it”--a preternatural poise and grace. In a videotaped performance of her singing at a pageant, she exhibited a coquettish allure that stopped barely short of seductive, one that transformed her from an adorable 6-year-old into a chillingly adult-like woman-child.
The videotape was riveting, not only for the obvious reason of JonBenet’s death, but because it raises troubling questions about the way in which some children’s beauty pageants objectify and even sexualize their participants.
V.J. LaCour, for one, has all but stopped judging those children’s pageants that strictly emphasize looks. And she’s no feminist crusader. LaCour, of Citrus Heights, Calif., near Sacramento, has been involved in pageants for 20 years as a pageant judge and now as publisher of the glossy Pageant Life magazine, a quarterly trade publication that reaches 60,000 industry participants, directors and vendors. (Pageantry--now a $5-billion industry--supports numerous such magazines and newsletters.)
LaCour is a vocal disciple of pageantry and for what it can offer girls: discipline, fun, mother-daughter togetherness, poise and confidence in public speaking and performing.
But she is repelled by that slice of youth pageantry that rewards Lolita-like participants who look and pose well beyond their years.
A review of photos of these little girls in the pageant magazines proves the point. In one, a 6-year-old blond from Ohio could easily pass for 12, with her frosted, wind-swept hair and dark mascara. In another, an 8-year-old Philadelphia girl with flowing black curls and snapping black eyes might as well be a senior in high school, so mature is her mien. And in still another, a 6-year-old Michigan girl could have walked onto the set of “Designing Women” with her big hair.
“They don’t remind me of kids. They’re trained. They all look the same,” LaCour said. The winners’ families, she said, pay smartly to achieve that look. Many spend upward of $800 on custom-made pageant dresses--sartorial confections of satin and taffeta, net sleeves and rhinestone-studded bodices. Some even hire hairdressers to accompany them to competitions. And many hire coaches who work to sharpen the girls’ talent presentations and interviewing skills.
“They go from one pageant to another, constantly, and the emphasis is put on win, win, win,” LaCour said.
She prefers the “scholarship pageants,” competitions in which judges also consider a participant’s academic record, talents and personality. “They allow children to be children,” LaCour said.
Many of those, such as America’s Darling and Lil’ Darling pageants run by 69-year-old Adelyn Foreman of Orlando, Fla., strongly discourage makeup. More than once, Foreman said, she has urged mothers who slather on blush, lipstick and mascara to “please, please don’t do that, please tone it down.”
She also eschews fancy, expensive pageant dresses. “In the beauty division, someone with a cute little Sunday Easter dress will win,” said Foreman, whose nonprofit pageants are held in 10 states.
(She donates all profits to children’s charities such as the Children’s Wish Foundation in Maitland, Fla., for children with life-threatening diseases.)
“I say, ‘Please let your children look natural,’ ” Foreman said.
Yet, decades after the feminist movement sought to reduce the emphasis on girls’ looks, guess which type pageant--scholarship or beauty--is most popular?
“The beauty pageants still reign,” LaCour said.
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And not only do they reign, but they are growing.
Sunburst Beauty Pageants out of Tallahassee, Fla., has become one of the largest youth pageant systems, a 19-year-old concern with events in 40 states and Canada. “We’re simply looking for a pretty little face,” said executive director Theresa Spooner.
She believes Sunburst has thrived because parents see the pageants as a way to build their children’s self-esteem. Everyone gets a trophy. And, she said, the prizes--savings bonds, toys, television sets, jewelry and 6-foot trophies--make their events “look like Christmas.”
“Basically, at our pageants, everybody’s happy. Maybe that’s why we’ve done so well,” Spooner said.
When Mike Maki began keeping tabs on the pageant industry a decade ago, he counted about 130 national pageant systems. Those included pageants for girls and women from babies to grandmothers--systems that included local, regional or state, and, finally, national competitions. (He doesn’t even begin to count the local beauty contests that crown their own peanut- and rose-festival queens.)
Today, there are at least 250 national pageant systems, and the fastest-growing segment is the 8-and-under age group, said Maki, president of EPIC International Associates, of Beaverton, Ore., which represents pageant judges, directors, contestants and vendors.
About 3 million girls and women enter pageants, said Maki and Charles Dunn, publisher of Pageantry magazine in Orlando, Fla. Dunn says a third are teenagers or younger girls. At least half a million are younger than 12, Dunn said.
And, while pageants flourished mostly in Southern states 30 years ago, they have since spread nationwide, Maki said. Texas, California, Florida and New York now host more pageants than any other states.
As such, pageants have become big, big business. Maki offers this conservative estimate: It’s a $5-billion industry. “Look at the swimsuits, the dresses, shoes, all the paraphernalia, plus trophies, ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom, the list goes on and on,” he said.
But what is driving pageantry, especially youth pageantry, in an age when little girls are routinely reminded that they can be astronauts, doctors, lawyers--perhaps even president some day--and that looks shouldn’t count?
Money, for one thing. Although only a small percentage of participants actually win something, the promise of cars, toys and even cash prizes as high as $10,000 prove irresistible.
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Some mothers and daughters become particularly close planning and practicing for the competitions. Evelyn Stewart, who runs a modeling and talent agency in Tampa, Fla., said many girls grow and thrive through the experience.
She entered her daughter in pageants when she was 3. “It’s been a real good thing for Lisa,” Stewart said, noting that her daughter, now 30, is a showroom model in New York City and performs with the Rockettes.
“There’s just nothing like putting a crown on your little girl’s head. These mothers love it. I did,” Stewart said.
But do the children?
Critics see the pageants as a venue through which stage moms live vicariously through their daughters, turning them into robotic performers who learn early that looks are, in fact, the ticket to wealth and fame.
“A pageant by its very nature is a sexually objectifying event,” said Deborah Tolman, a senior research scientist at the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.
Tolman scoffs at families who defend putting 3-, 4- and 5-year-old girls into pageants, parents who insist that their little girls enjoy the pageants as much as other children like Little League or soccer.
“Of course they do. Kids love being the center of attention,” Tolman said. “But if you gave them a different venue, they’d love that too.”
In fact, these little girls absorb a decidedly different--and destructive--message than do the boys and girls who choose sports, music or other activities that reward talent and skill, Tolman said.
They learn that they are valued simply by conforming to an idealized version of feminine beauty.
And there is a cost, she said. This cultural message subtly erodes women’s and girls’ ability to reach equity with men and boys in all arenas, because it downplays women’s intellectual achievements.
Said Tolman: “The more images of women being good sexual objects, the more they are insidiously kept from making progress.”
