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  The Society for Consumer Advocates and Mavens

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BEAUTY CONTESTS

Pageant organizers may not always "pay-off" the contest winners with the gifts, money and prizes the contestants were promised they had a chance to win when they entered the contest! In addition, what is actually given away may not always be as valuable as it was promoted to be. Some prizes may also be acquired from "deep discounter" retailers just to try and save pageant organizers money.

Do contests for young children make the children happy or do they exist to make parents happy? Today, beauty pageantry is big business compared to how it used to be conducted. Nowadays parents buy their children expensive gowns, even coaching lessons on how to win!

Pageant "moms" may do almost anything to give their young daughters that competitive edge necessary to further their beauty contest careers. Is this healthy or are these "moms" just possibly living out their unrealized fantasies through their children?

Furthermore, are children being unduly sexualized by "toddler" beauty pageants? How they look and walk seem to become as important as what kind of values they are learning. Contests for children under the age of 9 may be somewhat riskier when it comes to the values the children may be acquiring consciously or unconsciously.

Well-paid pageant coaches and consultants may be teaching young contestants how to be sexier, more attractive and more appealing. Is this one reason why child molesters and pedophiles are attracted to "toddler" beauty contests?

SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: NBC-TV DATELINE 1/14/97 and ABC-TV 20/20 1/17/97

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