Baby Beauty Queens
As the American phenomenon of the children’s beauty pageant hits the UK, this documentary uncovers a surreal new world where nine-year-olds get fake tans and seven-year-olds wear contact lenses.
With the grand final of the first ever Mini Miss UK beauty contest taking place at a leisure centre in Milton Keynes, it soon becomes clear that tantrums and tiaras may prevail over perfect poses and pouts. The mastermind behind the pageant is a middle-aged ex-beauty queen, who plans the entire event from her stairwell in Colchester.
The film follows three girls and their mothers in the lead up to the big event, and as they prepare to dazzle the judges the real reasons why they are all desperate to be crowned Mini Miss UK become apparent.
From the evangelical Christians who are convinced that God will help them win the pageant to the disadvantaged kid for whom the contest holds the key to a better life, the film portrays an eccentric, and at times disturbing, snapshot of modern Britain. (Excerpt from bbc.co.uk)
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I wonder who want’s do this – the kids or the mothers. All the mothers seem to be living their lives through the successes of their children, either via not having a life of their own or putting the responsbility of having to support their family on their child.
In addition, I’m seriously concerned about the values being imposed on these poor kids. What ever happened to virtues such as intelligence and individualism (because lets face it these poor kids all look the same)? And just being a freakin’ kid! The kids’ (and their mums’!) self worth is so wrapped up in what they look like that I hope they keep it because without it I don’t think they or their mums will have much left. All these mothers are damaged goods and projecting their insecurities onto their little girls thereby creating another generation of damaged goods.
This is so rediculous and it is clearly traumatic for the kids. And what happens to the poor little girls that don’t make it – are they now all of a sudden not pretty enough. They really have nothing else other than their looks to fall back on through no fault of their own. It’s pathetic and sad…
MediaCurves.com just conducted a study with 300 viewers of a video featuring the recent controversy surrounding child beauty pageants. The results showed that the majority of viewers reported that “disturbed” and “sad” were the emotions the felt most while watching the video. The study found that 84% of viewers reported that they felt the long-term effect on contestants was negative. For more in-depth results, please visit http://www.mediacurves.com/Culture/J7495-pageants/Index.cfm.
Thanks,
Ben
That’s what I like about these types of documentaries, they tell a story that are out of the ordinary. Children beauty contests are really out of the ordinary. Of course we have opinion about this but will it matter? Opinions are projected anyway. For these girls, projected opinions about how they are perceived is everything to them simply because they will end up with nothing else.
Silly silly silly.
I think that the mothers of those very young girls are doing something wrong for them ,and instead of “promoting”or “ensuring” their children’s future, they might affect the kid personality …causing them loss of confidence and self esteem .I’ve notice that Madison and the singing rich girl ,where pushed so hard by their mothers forcing them to act and desire something that they didn’t yet discover …It is hard to understand and feel comfortable during this forced “preparation”..Because it’s to early for their ages and they are not ready yet, U can not suddenly rush a child to become over night a teenager?!?!? the girls had no clue about what where doing and why they where doing it ,not To mention the stressed out parents putting so much pressure upon the little shoulders .I have nothing against the idea of a beauty contest for children …but do they really have to put so much make up on? Why is it so difficult for the parents to understand Something so simple like …answering the question ..What kind of beauty has a child …why do they bring us joy ?BECAUSE OF THEIR PURITY!!!!
Anyway I am sad for those tow beautiful girls and i hope that someday they will have their own mind and be able to decide for them personal options despite the bad influence that they receive from parents . And yes i must say it can’t help it! “baby-es” with acrylic nails and a lot of make up are FREAKY and the show the best source of entertaining any PEDOFILE
i am appalled at the idea of this kind of exploitation. This should be illegal. i cannot wrap my brain around the thinking of these parents , pageant organizers, judges. Messing up childrens lives,
and i have to ask Where are the fathers. girls will have a hard enough time living in this world.
ièm glad the truth is shown. maybe something can be done about it. I live in canada i dont know of any child pageants but i must check it out.
Everything is outward appearance, what about the childs spirit. How will these children deal with ages… there is so much resistance to growing old in our culture.
dear dear kids. i was outraged at these mothers ..and the reaction of the sister who choerographed her little sisters dance was too much, where is childrens services and advocates.
the organizers must be looking at the dollars this can make.
the mom who said that there was too much make-up on the other kids called it exploitation yet she can;t see that that is what she is doing, and even if her child gained self confidence because of it there are other ways to do that! her was a kid with pressure to win for money.
the mother with the kid and the other sister just was frightening… what pressure, the child was so visible unhappy yet the mom continued to pursue her child.
wrong wrong wrong on all levels
That in a country that considers pedophilia to be a major crime… it has a bit of hypocricy in it doesn’t it?
Those children aren’t even judged on how good a child they are, they are being judged on how close they can be pulled and painted into adult-looking clowns.
Something nobody mentioned: make-up and paint do deteriorate the health of the skin. So these kids aren’t only psychologically mutilated here.
I’d be less shocked if at least the kids seemed to enjoy it, which was not the case.
And oh god they even made them fill their chest with who knows what for that “formal wear” thing. They suddenly all had a bossom.
Yeah, this is really creepy stuff. I don’t know how the parents can justify doing this to little children. It’s perverse. There must be a lot of pedophiles running these things. Who else would actually enjoy watching children paraded around like this?
There is nothing but insecurity and pain in the eyes of these poor girls and their mothers
When you see a mother dressing up her child to look like a pint sized hooker, you can bet she is divorced or married to a coward of a man.
I couldn’t watch the whole thing. Those mothers need a kick in the *** that is for sure.
It should be illegal to give minors cosmetic surgery unless they’re missing half their face or something.
This is no different than little boys being pressured by dads to be good in sports. There is a show for everything. Dogs, cats, cars, kids, etc..people pick something and pursue it to extremes, spending 10x the amount of the winnings to do it and get a cheap reward. Mind boggeling as it is everyone wants to be special and if they arn’t they live vicariously through somebody else. Been to a boxing match lately?
Karen, what planet did you fall off? It is the sexual exploitation that makes the offensive difference in child ‘beauty’ pagents. Boys may be pressured by dads to excell but not to be sexually appealing in the process. I watched one backstage demented ***** of a mother who told her 13 year old girl, who she had dressed like a hooker, to shake what god had given her. Putting false teeth covers on those little girls is about as disturbing as it gets, not to mention the Tammy Faye Baker makeup and false eyelashes. They are not having these children judged on the natural beauty of innocence but these ***** half-wit mothers are striving to turn them into miniture sex objects. I hope you are not a mother! If you are I sincerely hope the father has more damn sense.
Reb: You’re absolutely right. Dressing up little girls like hookers and giving them cosmetic surgery to make them look “prettier” is NOT AT ALL like pressuring boys to be good in sports, unless Karen is talking about stretching them out on the rack to make them better at basketball or something. A more equivalent example would be stripping little boys down to their underwear, oiling them up and parading them around the stage like bodybuilders. And people probably do that somewhere too. I sure as hell wouldn’t be surprised.
Tim, when airheads compare sports with child sexual abuse, and that is exactly what these pagents are all about, that shows the mentality that allows this garbage to continue. Any right thinking person who watches those insane mongrel butt ugly women encouraging those children to imitate grown women in such a sexually blatant manner should know immediately those mothers have a very serious mental problem. I couldn’t stand to sit and watch one of those pagents and it breaks the heart of any feeling person to see those children forced to degrade themselves to please a total lunatic. There is a reason these mothers do this and it is all about them and not the child. That is the truly scary part. I bet every child molester from miles around love these shows. Wouldn’t you be sickened to know some damn pervert took pictures of your child so they could use them to masturbate by?! That was the confession of one convicted pedophile on a special report I saw a few years ago. He said it was the best place to go to get aroused. Absolutely sickening.
These parents are absolutely ridiculous, trying to live a life they never had by using their kids. What kind of mother worries about her child not being cute enough?
Ugh. This nonsense is spreading beyond the USA?
What’s wrong with these women?
Of all the girls profiled, I am most concerned for Madison. She looks dead. Her eyes are as hollow as those of the children I’ve seen photographed in WWII concentration camps. This child is in danger of becoming a psychological cripple and she needs help. Someone has got to step in and try to protect her. She needs a friend who can help her grow through her authentic self–someone who values the integrity of inner beauty and can help encourage her to develop a healthy self-confidence. Her older sister seems like she might be able to mentor her a little bit, but I think Madison really needs professional help at this point. I hope that there is someone reading this who knows this family and has the courage to reach out in a discreet way that doesn’t threaten the mother’s sense of authority.
But the mother has got to learn to stop abusing her daughter like this. I wish that blaming her her brought me some sense of satisfaction or reparation but it doesn’t. She isn’t consciously violating her daughter–she’s just projecting her own soul wounds onto her daughter’s psyche without realizing it. Emotional wounds are inherited from one generation to the next. But they don’t have to be. Madison and her mom both need guidance and healing and it is unfortunate that their church doesn’t seem to offer that. In fact, it looks like their church is actually making everything worse. A minister who is spiritually spineless enough to “bless” this kind of abuse and lead the congregation into colluding with the mother’s exploitive behavior should not be practicing. His message is patently anti-Christian and this fact is clear even to a non-believer. If a definitive tenant of Christianity holds that Christ sacrificed himself to free humanity to spiritually redeem itself from the material world, how can this congregation pray to Christ for help in winning a meat-market contest and still think they are practicing their faith? They really think that overvaluing appearance is an orthodox practice? These guys need a remedial critical thinking class and Sunday school lessons.
This whole thing is absolutely disgusting in so many ways. What bothers me most, though, is the hyper-sexualization of these little girls. It’s so… gross and wrong.
wow… nothing like teaching your daughter to be a vacant ***** and that “as long as I’m pretty the world will be fine”. Must be much easier than inspiring them to do something like get a degree and be a useful member of society. These parents are disgusting, you know that a 9 year old doesn’t wake up one day and say “gee I’d like to be in a beauty pageant and inspire pedophiles worldwide”
What a freakshow. These ‘parents’ are just begging to have their kids kidnapped by pedophiles. These born again people were not born right the first time and they weren’t born right the second time either. These women are clinically insane and pageant organizer Pam is frighteningly ugly yet she feels qualified to judge the beauty of other women. The poor kids are going to grown up with serious mental issues.
Reading other comments, I think I’ll be repeating a lot of what they have voiced… that it’s exploitive, harmful and could be considered (mental) abuse for these young girls.
Having ‘babies’ (ie: 6-11 year olds) compete in a pageant like this could end up devastating their childhood imaginative dreams — the play world that little girls and boys NEED to help develop their personalities, sense of adventure and confidence. Kids find out what the real world is like all too soon and face harsh realties as they grow older. It’s the cocoon of their childhood that helps make them a better person and putting them in something like this could destroy that playful, hopefulness.
Take a look at Madison… it was obvious she didn’t really want to be in the pageant — was half-hearted about it until the big day (even told her pastor she had no idea why she was entered into it). At the event however, her admitting that if she didn’t win would mean she wasn’t pretty was very disheartening to hear — and that is exactly what she thought when she lost… She’s what.. 9 – 10…? Should a child of this age even THINK of that kind of thing in the first place?! I think her mum had good intentions behind this… but put forth her daughter into something that she, herself always wanted and didn’t think of what Madison felt.
The only positive thing I saw out of this was that Sasha…the poor shy girl ended up feeling a little more confident about herself. I think her mum was bang-on when she frowned of how much make-up all the other girls were wearing (in fact, the winning girl – who was 13 didn’t seem to be wearing much at all). On another level though, what she says around her daughter transcends into what type of person Sasha is turning into (someone who doesn’t have much confidence in herself and worries about money). This unfort. is because of her mum being the same way. Having said that though, this experience was probably good for the both of them — to show that even if you’re poor, you still can do whatever you want and succeed at it (personal satisfaction). As the ending stated… because of this pageant, Sasha now has 2 modeling jobs on her pv… :) — and she’ll have a mum who will support her no matter what the outcome may be.
OMG…this tripe is sick beyond reason. These women need to be flogged.
Children done up to look like 10 $ whores…BRAVO !!! Makes me wanna throw up.
Meet the new generation of emotionally disturbed women, psychiatric patients and anorexia babes.Yep…in Jesus name they should pray their daughter don’t end up messed up individuals.
This is more of a commentary on parenting than anything else,although the fact that we feel the need to seek affirmation in the form of pageants surely speaks volumes about our fragile character(s).
At the end,the comment made by Madison’s sister is absolutely heartbreaking. She’s her sister,probably the only middle-ground the child has,and she is aware that “She’ll think she’s ugly!”. She’ll remember that moment forever,I guarantee you. Very sad,indeed.
And Sacha’s mother had the right idea,by making it all about ‘growth’,not winning,although I wish she’d make the child more confident in her education. Something tells me she’s underestimating the girl’s intelligence.
when they said that the little girl had plastic surgery when she was 7 my heart just dropped… how can they treat their daughters like dolls
The minds of Euro and US citizens is truly disturbing. These countries suffer from Bipolar disorder. On the one hand these nations are trying to protect children from exploitation (factory work, sex slave trade, war, from pedophiles… etc), yet on the other hand these nations are hyper-sexualizing childhood (ex: there are thongs for little girls… disgusting and disturbing if the parents actually buy that garbage). Remember marketers invented the term Tween (between child and teenager) to make products for little girls between ages 6 through 12, so they can be consumers for life (have to have that garbage strawberry flavor lip balm). Now 6 yrs old is no longer a child but a tween and it’s getting disturbingly younger… that’s truly psychotic. Boys do have this but in the sense of over-masculine them. However, boys are given a whole range of role models to look up to… not just one pre-package persona to go by, unlike girls who are told by society they’re only value are their looks (which is why the first girl said she always wanted to be a model… has she not explore other fields to make that concrete conclusion). Is it no wonder than females of these cultures go under the knife more often than any other woman in the world. Women are doing things to themselves in these so-called advanced cultures that some people are trying to stop in Africa. The only winner at the end are the rich, over-privileged, white men in the corporations who sell us this ideal of fake beauty. BTW, before we men point the blame on the women for not ignoring this idealism… just remember each time we men buy a porno magazine or a car magazine or drooling over the fake tits on Spike TV we’re supporting that fake idealism of beauty and projecting to our women that they’re nothing unless they look in a certain way. We’re also to blame for feeding and encouraging these corporations to make our females feel like they’re not worth it. This goes beyond just the dilemma of young beauty pageants, but the dilemma of our cultures targeting the most vulnerable… children.
With that last statement in mind, I want to know… where are the fathers (or male role models) of these little girls? To me I find it rather strange that these girls are growing up without seeing any male role models (positive male role models) to have an example what a man is, so they wouldn’t make any regretful mistake of going out with a jerk. Of course this is assuming if they grow up preferring males.
Thanks to the poster for posting this video.
This is horrid- what a bunch of terrible people.
Bless little Sasha’s heart. I think it’s interesting that she’s the one who went on to do something. It’s because she was genuine. I find these things have two sides. For the girls who are told that their looks are everything, it damages them. For a girl like Sasha I think it can help. She felt better afterwards because she had somebody applaud for her. The mother was also a bit more grounded and realized that too much make up and **** is crazy. I think the problem with this, or with anything really, piano, dance, baseball, football, ect. ect. that the parents often want it and they force it. It should be something that the child should want to do. If I had a daughter and she said that she wanted to be in a pageant, I don’t know what I would do. If it was something they really wanted, I think you can find away to make it positive. Tell her she’s only going to do natural beauty pageants because she’s already beautiful. Use it to practice her talent. Emphasize the talent part. Enter them in ones that have an emphasize in some sort of questioning aspect so that you can focus on their thinking skills. I just think that people tend to focus on the negative, and this is something that’s easy to take a pot shot at. I think brains is way more important but I do want to emphasize that all children should feel beautiful. Not in away where I think they need to be made up like dolls, but I think in some ways in our modern culture (I’m American, but I feel this probably applies to Europe as well) that we are starting to strip away the sexes of children because we don’t want to label them and put them in boxes and say that a girl needs to be this way or that way. I agree, but if a girl is a girl that loves jewelry and being made up and feeling pretty I think we need to respect that that is who she is as well. That that’s ok to want to be somebody who feels beautiful just the same as the little girl who wants to play sports.
This is horrible…Children are not toys. Those parents are depriving their children of a childhood(a few exceptions) Not only that, they are building psychological obstacles that may never be conquered. …Not enough winners in this game. Is it really worth it?
I just don’t understand why a parent would put their child through this. Giving them a “Belief Board” of beliefs that should not be for a 9 yr old, but for a young woman. I am sure some believe that a 9 yr old girl is a young woman, but I don’t think so. The girls are treated like living dolls and not allowed to be an actual child. Being judged on talent, looks and drive can only damaged a 9 yr old. It is hard enough being an adult and being judged, but for a child it can be real harmful to their psyche. I am a parent of 3 daughters and I think they are being the best they can be by actually being themselves and having their own ideas. The 19 yr old goes to Columbia University in New York, the 18 yr old wants to be a Chef and go to school in Dallas, TX. My 15 yr old is just now coming into her own. I wish these people would stop playing parents and actually be a parent. These are just my thoughts and I know I can only raise and be responsible for the children I bring into this world. I hope I have given them the foundation to be a good person and a contributor of society.
This is a very sad documentary; disturbing to say the least.
A sad, disturbing documentary.
Hmm. Twice said? Twice true.
Poor little Madison thinks that her choices are being a model or sitting around in the house! It’s like feminism never happened. What dreadful ideas to pass on to your child! Madison needs to know that she can be a solicitor or a doctor or do any number of jobs that will be useful. The whole film made me angry.