Spray Tanning Toddlers Tuesday, November 01, 2011 By Co-Editor Sydnie Holzfaster - Advertising Orange skin, dark eyeliner, fake eyelashes and skimpy outfits...no, it’s not Halloween. It’s the competitive world of child beauty pageants. In 2009, the television show ‘Toddlers in Tiaras’ premiered on the television network TLC. This show shines a new light on the pageant industry, taking a first hand look at the true price of beauty for these little girls. Toddlers in Tiaras has shown mothers forcing their girls to parade around a stage decorated with highlights, thick make-up, and fake breasts. The original goal of these pageants was to promote confidence and instill poise in these girls. Putting fake breasts on your four year old daughter won’t give her confidence; it will destroy it. How can a girl develop a normal body image if her mother is constantly telling her she needs to change herself? Shows like this are encouraging young girls to aspire to be fake. The girls on this show are being taught to act more like an adult than a toddler. In addition to inappropriate padding, these mothers have gone to the extent of dressing their daughters in risqué outfits to make them look like Madonna or Daisy Duke. The mothers justify this as “helping their daughters understand what it means to be sexy.” WHAT?! Your daughter is four not twenty-four! She shouldn’t even know what the word sexy means. I think I can speak for just about everyone when I say that there is NOTHING sexy about a four year old, nor should there be. All girls are beautiful in their own way, and we shouldn’t feel like we have to stuff our shirts or exploit our bodies to feel worthy of attention. These little girls want to play with Barbies--they don’t want to be one.

Back to the articles list