Special on Children's Pageants
Apr. 26th, 2004 09:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ceebeegeeI watched an A&E documentary on children's (which usually means little girls') pageants last night. I've seen this one before but it's compelling enough to watch multiple times. Two stories stand out--one is of a woman and her daughter (always this combination, never dad-daughter, mother-son or God forbid, dad-son). This woman had been a former pageant winner (this, too, is common--it seems most of the mothers are all either former pageant winners or fat) and her daughter Lindsay was five, and had been competing for several years already. The little girl was beautiful, BTW--dark, softly curled hair, sweet face, brown eyes. She looked like Cammie King, who played Bonnie Blue Butler in Gone with the Wind. However it was clear she DID NOT like doing this. The mother was trying to get the girl to do her "Itsy Bitsy Spider" routine for camera and the girl first refused, then hid in the bushes. The mother and father were trying to talk her out of it by saying, "It's for you, not for me." You have to admire that child's well-developed bullshit detector--she didn't buy that for a second. The worst part was when the girl, upset because she knew her mother was pissed, was trying to hug the mother, and the mother shook her off angrily, saying "I hate it when you hang on me." Man. To quote Rhett Butler (hey, I'm on a GWTW roll), "You give yourself airs about your motherhood...a cat's a better mother than you."
To be fair, it did seem as though some of the girls enjoyed competing. But that may be because they won a lot. If adults participate in pageants, I don't fault that--it's not my thing (to do--I enjoy watching them ever since I became friends with a former top ten Miss America finalist, she had the best stories) but they know what they're getting into. But kids--I just worry like crazy over the message they're getting, especially the girls. First, the judgement, the end result is ridiculously subjective. The pageants don't all use the same type of scoring; they don't reward the same things. Second, it seems what they do reward is this...strange, warped look and behavior, wherein little children--sweet little girls, no more than 6--sing "Hey, Big Spender" and wear midriff-bearing tops and take off their jackets for a clapping crowd, topped with full makeup and absolutely huge heads of (partially fake) hair and rictus grins. The smiles kill me. I've never seen such fake smiles. They looked like animals bearing their teeth.
This is why I'm so big on sports for girls. Sports reward according to an objective standard of behavior--you score more points, you win. And you score more points (generally) by outperforming the other team. It makes sense. And you can improve. And the process of improvement is good for the character--you learn teamwork, you're working for a goal. Of course there is room for subjectivity in sports (just ask the 1972 US Olympic basketball team about that!)--no referree is perfect--but the process is transparent, not opaque.
The other interesting story was this 14 year old girl named Jenny. Jenny really did enjoy the pageants, it seemed--she was actually a very likeable girl who generally enjoyed being around her mother, although there were a few bouts of "Mo-om!" And her mother clearly wasn't living through her daughter, although she did say she was her best friend. The reason she indulged Jenny became clear about halfway through the program--the girl had cystic fibrosis, and wasn't expected to see her 16th birthday. The mother said "I do this with her because you only have so much time together, and if she's taken away from me even sooner, and there was something she wanted me to do, I want to do it for her." Man. Just--man. That's heart-breaking. The girl seemed pretty healthy, although every now and then she'd start coughing. But then they showed the mother and daughter doing this process whereby the mother ran a thing over her back and chest, that loosened the phlegm from her lungs so she could cough it up. They did this three times a day. The bombshell came at the end of the program, when they had a little note saying "On August 2, 1999, Jenny Foster lost her battle with cystic fibrosis. She was 14 years old." So this program was filmed during the last few months of her life. Wow. My heart just breaks for that mother. I wonder if she watches this program a lot. I wish I could tell her--you and your daughter both come off very well, and it's apparent how much you love her.
To be fair, it did seem as though some of the girls enjoyed competing. But that may be because they won a lot. If adults participate in pageants, I don't fault that--it's not my thing (to do--I enjoy watching them ever since I became friends with a former top ten Miss America finalist, she had the best stories) but they know what they're getting into. But kids--I just worry like crazy over the message they're getting, especially the girls. First, the judgement, the end result is ridiculously subjective. The pageants don't all use the same type of scoring; they don't reward the same things. Second, it seems what they do reward is this...strange, warped look and behavior, wherein little children--sweet little girls, no more than 6--sing "Hey, Big Spender" and wear midriff-bearing tops and take off their jackets for a clapping crowd, topped with full makeup and absolutely huge heads of (partially fake) hair and rictus grins. The smiles kill me. I've never seen such fake smiles. They looked like animals bearing their teeth.
This is why I'm so big on sports for girls. Sports reward according to an objective standard of behavior--you score more points, you win. And you score more points (generally) by outperforming the other team. It makes sense. And you can improve. And the process of improvement is good for the character--you learn teamwork, you're working for a goal. Of course there is room for subjectivity in sports (just ask the 1972 US Olympic basketball team about that!)--no referree is perfect--but the process is transparent, not opaque.
The other interesting story was this 14 year old girl named Jenny. Jenny really did enjoy the pageants, it seemed--she was actually a very likeable girl who generally enjoyed being around her mother, although there were a few bouts of "Mo-om!" And her mother clearly wasn't living through her daughter, although she did say she was her best friend. The reason she indulged Jenny became clear about halfway through the program--the girl had cystic fibrosis, and wasn't expected to see her 16th birthday. The mother said "I do this with her because you only have so much time together, and if she's taken away from me even sooner, and there was something she wanted me to do, I want to do it for her." Man. Just--man. That's heart-breaking. The girl seemed pretty healthy, although every now and then she'd start coughing. But then they showed the mother and daughter doing this process whereby the mother ran a thing over her back and chest, that loosened the phlegm from her lungs so she could cough it up. They did this three times a day. The bombshell came at the end of the program, when they had a little note saying "On August 2, 1999, Jenny Foster lost her battle with cystic fibrosis. She was 14 years old." So this program was filmed during the last few months of her life. Wow. My heart just breaks for that mother. I wonder if she watches this program a lot. I wish I could tell her--you and your daughter both come off very well, and it's apparent how much you love her.
