First Post: Wednesday, December 26, 2007
The other day I was watching this very interesting documentary. It was about a topic that has always called my attention: “Little Miss” Beauty Pageants. Those contests, where contestants are little girls between the ages of 1 to 10. This particular documentary was about 4 mothers and their little daughters in the process of one particular contest. Together they hired a coach to “train” their little ones to become total “beauty queens”.
Honestly, I’m not too judgmental about these beauty pageants things. I think that if you are young women, one of those that dream about showing off with a sash and a crown, there is nothing wrong, only if you do it because you love it. But in this particular case I must confess that I was horrified, appalled by the ways these mothers are raising their little ones. Little babies that at their short age, in the only thing they think about is on how they look on the outside. They teach them to smile; open their eyes, walk, suck their guts, perk up their butt, and talk a certain way, a way that is completely fake and superficial.
When I saw one of the girls crying because her tooth was falling and now she was going to have a gap, I knew this was way too much. I still can remember how exited I got when one of mine was falling because the “tooth fairy” will leave me a dollar under the pillow, but in these girls case is different. Their moms spend a lot of money in making them “mouth crowns” with perfect teeth that make them look like little ponies, with fake and weird smiles, because it’s supposed that girls their age are missing teeth, but in these cases they must have “perfect” smiles. Other girl cried because the big hair rollers she had on were uncomfortable and she can’t sleep, her mother got mad and started telling her “I’m gonna take them out, but tomorrow when your hair looks lifeless and ugly I don’t wanna hear any complaints, ok”, and I thought to myself, this is a complete idiot.
To deprive a girl this little of a normal youth is unfair and cruel. Instead of running, play with dolls, watching TV, and eating some candies, this girls learn how to fake a smile, wear 1000k dresses, makeup with foundation and fake eyelashes that make them look like tiny “street walkers” instead of regular looking little girls like is supposed. One of the mothers was saying she already had to take two loans to support the pageants expenses, her house was a ‘pigsite” but since her girl wanted to become a “Beauty Queen” she will risk everything to fulfill her little one’s dream, dreams of what the fuck? The girl was 4 and at that age you don’t even know how to speak and write, how the hell do you know what dreams you want to fulfill? What happens here is that those dreams are the mothers dreams that never get to realized them, that maybe have a lot of insecurities and had the wrong impression that if their girls get a collection of crowns in their bedrooms they are going to be happy girls.
At the end of the contest, when they gave away the awards, the girl that won (queen for 6th occasion or something like that) parade around with the most fake smile I ever saw in my life. She looked exhausted, and her mom was screaming like crazy and congratulating her, “See how all the sacrifices were worth”, she told her girl. The second runner up cried, she cried with such a disgust that all her innocence disappeared, “she was ugly and fat, why did she won?” she recriminated her mom, which on response told her “I told you that we needed to practice more, you have to decide if you want to keep doing this, because I’m not here for embarrassments” and at the same time she grabbed her kid by the hand and dragged her, while the girl clack her heels down the hallway. And the only thing that crossed my mind was, how pathetic is the mother.
To only think about this brings me a terrible sadness, just thinking that these girls lives will consist on pleasing their moms, in living under false pretenses, on worrying about wrinkles at 10 years old, just breaks my heart. I can imagine their moms putting them pressure to: be careful what they eat, suck their guts, wear hair rollers, wear makeup every time they step out of the house, be the cheerleaders team captains, that she must be the prom queen, that she must marry a wealthy man and make perfect babies. Gosh, just imagining this exasperates me. Ummm, I thought, we should change this contest name, it should be called, “Little Miss Sadness”.
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