September 19, 2011 • 26 mins
Child pageants started in Britain with the May Queen Festival. Before child beauty pageants, baby parades were all the rage. Are beauty pageants unhealthy for child contestants? Tune in to learn more.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. Today we are
(00:20):
going to talk about kid beauty pageants, child beauty pageants,
and baby parades. Because we've already done a podcast way
back when on Miss America. She z the adult That
makes it sounds sexual somehow, but that's the you know, obviously,
the the adult beauty pageant. But due to the popularity
(00:43):
of certain television shows that have documented kids in beauty
pageants and especially the pageant parents and all of the
glitz and glamour that goes into it, and the controversy
surrounding kid beauty pageants, we wanted to take a look
at these strange events. Yes, people parading their babies around. Um,
(01:08):
you know, we were reading a lot of sources from
from you know, articles from overseas. In England Australia, people
were really upset about what they called American style child
beauty pageant and I'll just have you know they did
not originate in America. We just sort of took them
and ran with them. Right. There's this article if we
found in the Guardian newspaper over in the UK talking
(01:32):
about this recent rise and popularity of like you said,
Caroline needs American style child pageants. But hey Guardian, uh,
sorry to burst your British bubble, but we got them
from you in the first place. This is coming from
Hillary Levy Freedman, who was a sociologist as she went
(01:52):
to Harvard and she is an expert on beauty pageants
in general, especially child beauty pageants, and she traced it
back to John Ruskin, a British art critic, historian and
rumored pedophile who started the May Queen Festivals in eighteen
eighty one. Yes, to honor a girlish innocence. That just
(02:17):
sounds terrible. Um yeah, he would the the queen of
the May Queen Festivals had to be the likable, ist
and lovable list of all the maidens. That's a quote.
Um yeah. And then you know it's spread to North
America and we took it in, reigin with it, like
I said, and it became kind of turned into this
(02:38):
what they call systematic baby competition, right because they didn't
they didn't start with older, you know, like adolescent and
Jayton girls. No, they when when it came over to
the United States, they started out with parading babies, right,
went right for the baby jugular, the baby jugular right.
The most the most famous baby parade is it Asbury
(03:00):
Was it Asbury Park? Excuse me um? It was the
first baby parade ever held on the East Coast, and
it drew tens of thousands of spectators and it's heyday
in the eighteen nineties, And in nineteen o four, Thomas
Edison made one of his first movies about the event. Yeah,
and you can see it's really easy to find. I
want to say it was in the National Archives. I
ran across Edison's footage from that baby parade. So if
(03:23):
you want to, uh, take a look at what those
those baby parades were like. It's really what you would
think it is. It is. It's a parade of old
timey prems, times and carriages and A New York Times
article from nineteen eleven described the twenty feet annual Asbury
Park Baby Parade um saying that there were fifty thousand
(03:44):
people in attendance and there were five hundred and eighty
three children, all being paraded in. I cannot even imagine,
as someone who has recently been on a plane with children,
lots of them, all of them under i'd say four,
I cannot imagine being around this many children, not if
(04:04):
they're be you know, if they're even if they're being
like paraded around because they're so I wouldn't even go.
Let's be honest, I can't imagine. You know, babies are cute,
but I gotta say the the baby parades got a
little weird. Yeah, they got kind of weird. Um. First
of all, Coney Island, not surprisingly, ended up with the
(04:25):
most popular baby parade, had twelve hundred participants in its
first year, six hundred of whom were competing for the
title of most Beautiful Baby. And you know when those
babies one, when those babies got that blue ribbon, just
they continued to sit there and drink their bottle. Um. Yeah.
It actually it really thrived in the nineties and one
(04:46):
year a three year old girl in a harem costume
one and a six year old girl one and a
show girl get up? Are you kidding me? Like, isn't
that creepy? And it's weird that that reminds me though
there was a recent controversy about this this m paget
mom who dressed up her I don't know, she's probably
(05:07):
like four or five year old daughter. And as Julia
Roberts from the movie Pretty Women, I mean, they were
all pretty, but I'm thinking of like the movie match
ship between pretty women and little women. God, I hope
can we can somebody make that? I hope? So? But
you're right, yes, the costume game from Pretty Woman? Uh?
(05:31):
And and yes, which one the red dress, the tall boots,
the tall boots, and the white top. Anyway, Yes, so
the tradition continues of questionable costumes for very young young girls, right.
And it wasn't It wasn't just for girls. There were
competitions involving boys and still are. Another less than tasteful
(05:54):
contest was the heaviest boy under one year of age. Yes, well,
because that was this was this whole thing became part
of the healthy baby movement, especially in the nineteen twenties.
This was an aspect of us very controversial public health
initiatives that is tied in with eugenics. Yikes. And for
(06:19):
those of you who don't know about the eugenics movement,
it kind of basically advocated practices that would improve a
population's genetic makeup in very controversial ways. Yes, and so
because of that, these better Baby contests that started in
the eighteen fifties and really peaked in nineteen thirteen, placed
(06:40):
emphasis on the physical perfection of these babies. They would
weigh them, measure them, judge their personalities. Yeah, they were
stripped naked and judged on several points. I think that's terrible,
poor a little. I hopefully they blocked it out or
just didn't remember their babies. Hopefully they Well, it kind
of sounds like you know, the the Westminster Dog Show
(07:02):
when they have them up on the dogs up on
the little stage and they lift their ears up and
lift their tails up, and it kind of those better
babies lifting those baby's tales. But yeah, back then it
also must have been somewhat controversial. The last known healthy
Baby contest was held at the Iowa State Fair in
nineteen fifty two, around the time the beautiful Baby contests
(07:24):
and parades also began to peter out. But I found
some modern day baby parade and healthy baby contest links. Yeah,
there was one. There's one in Hawaii called the Meadow
Gold Dairies annual Healthy Baby Contest, and it's a tradition
since nineteen fifty three, which is the year after this
fact about the Iowa State Fair in nineteen fifty two,
(07:45):
And the quote on the website is hundreds of toddlers
compete for the title of owah, Who's Healthiest Baby. They're
judged off physical appearance, healthiness, and personality, with each category
scored on a fifty point scale. No, it sounds like
the exact same thing now. I think it's worth noting that, um,
the Beautiful Baby contests started to die out in the fifties,
(08:09):
partially because people were concerned about spreading polio in large
every time, but kind of. But at the same time,
you still hear similar arguments that people make against today's
child beauty pageants. For instance, this uh this nineteen thirty
six New York Times headline Baby Awards and Joy. Yeah,
(08:30):
they're just saying that, like all of competing for all
these prizes, the parents would go bonkers trying to get
uh their kids first place. They would take kids across
state lines so that they could compete in more pageants,
false identification and all that stuff. Yeah, people, these it's
really more about the crazy parents than the kids. Yeah,
kids probably didn't even know what was going on. I
(08:52):
get to dress up today. But then in nineteen fifty
eight we have child and teen pageants take off with
America's Junior Miss Paget, which was started by the j
CS of Mobile, Alabama. Which is kind of interesting that
the kid and teen pageant things starts in Mobile because
(09:13):
a lot of times it seems like, at least from
the portrayals on television, a lot of us is taking
place in the South. Right, And not to offend anyone
or get too controversial, but the Guardian article quotes Frank
uh Let's Furity Purity, You're ready, a professor of sociology
at the University of kent Um. You know, he talks
(09:36):
a little bit about what these uh pageants mean to
parents and their kids, and he says that in America
it's seen as a white trailer trash kind of thing,
and there's a real contempt for that. But if you
come from a middle class background and shove your child
into music lessons, that's okay. Parental aspiration requires acquires different forms,
but it's a very similar kind of impulse. I think
(09:58):
it has a point that parents are always having our
kids into something. Just that he just points out this
perception that seems to be kind of prevalent about who's
doing what activity right because and there's another study UM
conducted by Hillary Levey Freedman who we talked about UM,
who is from Harvard, who did the She's done extensive
(10:18):
sociological research on beauty pageants as well, and she interviewed
forty one mothers who participated in about five pageants a year.
So these these are kind of like the super moms
that we stereotype with the child beauty pageants. And her
study found that mothers of lower income and lower education
levels would typically enroll their daughters in these contests to
(10:41):
teach them proper skills to move up the social ladder right,
because you you know, you have contests for things like
poise and they're putting on makeup and they have to
do this special talent that they can use entertain people.
So I mean, I can understand it. Possibly from that perspective,
active it might be there might be better ways. But
(11:03):
going back to the emergence of of teen and child
pageants in the United States, I would like to point
out not only some notable pageants, but also some notable
pageant winners. Teen pageant winners, for instance, America's Junior Miss
pageant of nineteen sixty three, Diane Sawyer. What, yes, I
(11:24):
had no idea, I know, and she's a pretty lady.
I'm sure she was a pretty baby. No, I think
this was the team competence team. Okay, so I'm sure
she was a young woman. She was probably a pretty
baby too. But other America's Junior Miss pageant winners include
Deborah Norville, Kim Bay Singer, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Debora
(11:46):
Messing from Will and Grays. All Right, ladies, see they
used it to transition into show business? Was what? Um?
I think a lot of well, okay, I'm not gonna
say a lot, but I think, you know, some parents
hope that their kids can transition into show business. It
was kind of talked about in some of those Our Goals.
But I wonder how promising it is if, say, your
your child takes the top prize at other, you know,
(12:06):
less prestigious beauty pageants such as Miss Catfish Queen, Miss
Baby Poultry Princess, Miss American Beauty, Queen of Hearts, or
Miss American starlet fashion model, which I wish I could win.
Now this American stolid fashion model that sounds like something
out of like Jim in the Hologram. It does, it
absolutely does. Um, which you know I was Jim when
(12:27):
You're for Halloween. That's another podcast. Um. You know, not
everybody is very excited about these pageants though, Um Freedman
uh was talking about blah blah blah. Okay, okay, not
everybody's excited. So Freedman was actually contacted by a group
of concerned citizens in Australia because this past summer, um
(12:49):
there was going to be a young people's pageant. Yeah,
like the American style seeping out first over to the UK,
now to Australia. Yeah, just arkling the globe like a plague. Um.
And she told them to calm down. There's actually very
little data on the long term effects of pageant participation
(13:10):
or the families who participate. Um. She actually discusses the
positive effects. Uh, you know, kids learned to be confident
in front of an audience, and it can be fun
for some of these kids to dress up and unteract
interact with other children. But she also brings up some
of the problems the potential issues that could arise. Um.
One of the things that she points out is what
(13:30):
happens if a child, you know, they've been dressed up
and Primpton prodded for these for these pageants, spray tand
fake teeth. We saw some pictures of little girls with
fake teeth and fake hands and it is horrific. Yeah,
I mean it's and especially with the teeth they you know,
there's a reason why you know, kids have baby teeth
(13:51):
that fall out and then when you're an adult you
have the adult teeth. Kids with adult teeth. It does
look very unnatural. Yeah. Um, but she she point it's
out that a child looking in the mirror and not
recognizing herself could be really confusing and traumatic for the child,
and it might reinforce the idea that she's only pretty
with these fake teeth, dyed hair, fake tan. I mean,
(14:14):
that's the thing. Like, I get what the point she's
trying to make about saying, like, well, it teaches them
confidence in front of an audience. It can be fun interaction. Okay,
if you want confidence in front of an audience, there
are things like theater, improv how about team sports if
you want to interact or piano for skills like there
are certainly options out there that aren't Number one, like
(14:37):
judging your child on her beauty Yeah, and and possibly
a questionable wardrobe choices yeah she um. She references a
two thousand five article and the journal Eating Disorders that
discusses links between beauty pageant participation and eating disorders. Um.
She said that childhood pageant participants scored higher on body
(14:59):
dissatisfact and the non participants, and participation may lead to
difficulty trusting interpersonal relationships and greater impulsive behavior, but it doesn't. Actually,
she says that it's not statistically significant its effects on
bulimic behaviors, body perception, depression, and self esteem basically because girls,
(15:19):
whether they are pageant participants are not, are so inundated
by media images promoting this thin ideal for for women,
this unnatural thinness that it doesn't make It doesn't make
them anymore likely to develop and eating disorder. But I
think we should also point out that this was a
really small example of population. It was twenty two uh participants,
(15:42):
eleven of whom had done the pageants. Right. Um, actually, ah,
this makes me so sad. But the the girls who
are I'm sorry. The young They were young women at
this point. The survey was done between nineteen, and they
were more likely to think of them selves as larger. Yeah,
whether I mean no matter, because they were paired. The
(16:04):
eleven girls who had participated in pageants as kids were
paired with counterparts of similar age, weight, whatever, who had not,
And the pageant participants were more likely to think of
themselves as large and also had a greater preference for um,
kind of acquiring a smaller figure. Yeah, probably because they
were used to standing up on stage, you know, sandwiched
(16:26):
between like other other thin girls. Right. But you know,
she does point out that there is a difference here
between the pageant and non pageant participants, but it wasn't
completely statistically significant however, Um, you know, she does point
out that all of these girls were um exposed to
you know, lots of media, you know, thin images, images
(16:50):
of thin women in magazines and TV and all that,
so they were all sort of affected by it. Yeah.
I think with all of the all of the articles
that we read, aside from the parents who were their
children in these pageants, and some of the girls interviewed,
to be fair, some of them said that they enjoy it.
You know, you'll see that on some of the television shows.
The kids seem to be into it. But at the
end of the day, it does seem like it's something
(17:12):
very much orchestrated by the parents and especially the mothers,
who get really into this whole pageant cycle. And there
was aside from those people, there was no one in
any of these articles that was like, yeah, I mean,
pageants are good for kids. It was always like, maybe
it qualified, well, you might have a couple of benefits.
And if you're talking to a psychologists as there was
(17:34):
always no, no, it's really not good. But I think
maybe one of the reasons why there isn't more empirical
data on on how these this pageant cycle affects kids
is because there are around three thousand children's pageants per
year in the US, attracting more than a hundred thousand contestants.
And while that seems like a lot, I mean, while
(17:55):
you know, it might seem kind of crazy that perhaps
kids do compete for Miss Baby Poultry Princess, but a
hundred thousand contestants, that's that is a small slice of
of the entire population in that in that group, not
to say that because it's a relatively small group of
people than we shouldn't care. But that just might, it
might be one of the reasons why there isn't more.
(18:17):
I also talk about how difficult it is to study children,
you know, to get children to participate, uh in in
in research like that, and it would probably be a
little more difficult with this group to separate the filter
out their parents influence from what they actually want to do, right,
especially you know, at such a young age, how do
you know that it's what they want? And uh The
(18:39):
University of Kent sociology professor who's quoted in the Guardian
sort of points that out and he says that, um,
no child is autonomous. If a child says this is
what I want to do, it's generally not a hundred
miles away from what the parent wants. What one sees
here is adult fantasies fueling this thing. It's for adults,
and here's the thing to um because the sociologist is
(19:01):
also the one who is saying that it appeals more
to um lower socio economic groups, which is kind of
ironic because beauty child beauty pageants are a huge financial investment.
The parents are making some people are taking out loans.
Some of these pageants end up costing parents tens of
(19:21):
thousands of dollars. I can't think of all the shoes
or you know, college education or whatever. But I mean
to to enter America's Gorgeous Girl. To get sure, if you,
if you had a little if you wanted to enter
me Caroline and America's Gorgeous Girl, it would cost you dollars. Now,
if I wanted to enter you, and I wish I
(19:42):
could in the Ultimate Supreme at Southern Sparkles and Smiles
and that is Smiles with a Z, it would cost
me four dollars just to get you on that stage,
not to mention the fake tan i'd have to give you.
I know my Scottish background is I look scared in
photos sometimes. Um yeah, I mean you've got to consider
(20:03):
training photos, hair and makeup clothes. I mean some you know,
people are getting custom gowns made for their little girls
because they're just going to grow out of It just
makes me sick. Um yeah. And let's you know, not forget.
They point out this is on banquet dot com where
they're talking about all the money that goes into it. Um,
and they mentioned that the parents who serve as managers
(20:25):
for their children can get way too involved, and these
parents typically end up having a far less stable and
positive relationship with their children. I mean, can you imagine
so if you get involved so involved in the in
the circuit that you would need some kind of managerial figure.
The parent might want to bring in some kind of
pageant assistance, even more money. And a pageant expert points
(20:46):
out in the article that Bally lessons are worth it
for poise, but tanning sessions are not. The judges sometimes
think they look silly and they do on on grown
up people too, And they should also save their money
from buying colored contacts because those apparently freak out judges
and myself and absolutely Paris Hilton, that goes out to you.
(21:06):
But like you know, children and children colored contexts. But
I think that's exactly the point. That the fact that
parents would consider temporarily changing their young child's eye color
and putting in, you know, fake adult teeth and spray
training them down in order to win what a tiara,
a sash, a gift certificate to a local superstore, it
(21:33):
just doesn't seem worth. It doesn't seem worth it either.
I mean think, and I know everyone has different priorities,
everybody is different. Everybody has a thing. It's my motto.
Everybody has a thing. Um. But you know, just think
about all the money that these people are spending and
they could be spending it on something else, maybe investing
it if they're if they're concerned about you know, getting
(21:53):
their moving their daughters up some kind of social ladder,
maybe they should invest it in I don't know, education,
if they've got that money, put it into college. But
I don't know. I mean, I'm not their parents, but
it definitely seems like there are far better investments than uh,
sparkle and glitz. Although you know, the title of the
Ultimate supremea Southern sparkles and smiles would be would be something.
(22:14):
And I just would like to point out that I
still have a mental image circulating in my brain from
the poultry thing of a baby dressed in a chicken suit,
just like to that this baby poultry princess indeed picturing
well either that or you know, I don't know. Yeah,
well I think we've I think we've gone about as
far as we can with child. But there's so much there,
(22:35):
and especially I mean just the fact that uh, that
the baby parades are connected in some way to eugenics.
That just gets the whole thing off on an awkward foot.
And I don't know, but you know what I want
to hear from UM if any listeners have actually participated
in pageants when they were kids, because you know, I
grew up with a I knew a couple of girls
growing up who actually did like young Lady modeling and
(22:58):
and it was the same thing. Their parents were like,
we're and I give you confidence because you're pretty and
confidence in whatever. And that's the only way you should
be able to find confidence as a woman is to
have someone else tell you that you're pretty enough to
be liked. Right makes me feel sad, So write us
send us your emails anyone who has any thoughts on pageants,
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is the address.
(23:19):
In the meantime, we got a couple of emails here
on our women in Science episode, and this is from
a listener who wishes to remain anonymous. UM. She wrote
in after listening to our science podcasts UM. She said,
another woman who had an amazing scientific breakthrough, although not
known for being a scientist, is Hetty Lamar. The actress.
(23:43):
She is best known for inventing frequency hopping spread spectrum technology,
originally invented during World War Two from asking radio signals
for torpedoes. Although I don't think it was used until
the nineties, it is now a major building block to
cell phone technology. She invented other stuff as well, and
was really interested in science. I find her fascinating. You
(24:05):
can have brains and beauty also. I actually have a
degree in electrical engineering. When I graduated in the nineties,
my graduation class was only ten percent women. I did
an internship within this field, but when offered a job
after graduation, didn't accept it for several reasons. One of
the reasons was that the workplace environment was obviously dominated
by men and really wasn't comfortable for me. It wasn't
(24:26):
that there was any type of discrimination, it just was
not a group that I felt I would enjoy working
with because I had nothing in common with them and
didn't feel I fit in on a personal level, which
is a big part of the workplace experience. I ended
up taking a job with an I T Consulting, so
still stem and love it. Most entry level positions at
the time were fairly equal between men and women, and
(24:48):
I found it to be a better and more balanced
working environment. Well, I've got one here from Jessica, and
while she started out as a chemistry major in college,
she ended up switching to Spanish education, and she makes
an interesting point about gender in the education field. And
as she said, the education field is positively overrun by women,
(25:08):
and what few men are there are relegated to specific fields,
usually agricultural science or physical education. I did know a
couple of guys in either social science or English education,
but funnily enough, I never met a guy from math
education or science education field, although there was one token mail.
In elementary education, gender was a topic we touched on
(25:29):
in multiple education classes. Because so many teachers are female,
it's important to make our male students feel included. So
that's kind of that's that's one observation to maybe, as
we're talking a lot about the dearth of women in science,
maybe there's a dearth of men in education that we
should touch on a NATO podcast indeed, and again our
email addresses Mom's Stuff at how Stuff Works dot com,
(25:50):
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(26:14):
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?
From house Stop works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. Today we are
(00:20):
going to talk about kid beauty pageants, child beauty pageants,
and baby parades. Because we've already done a podcast way
back when on Miss America. She z the adult That
makes it sounds sexual somehow, but that's the you know, obviously,
the the adult beauty pageant. But due to the popularity
(00:43):
of certain television shows that have documented kids in beauty
pageants and especially the pageant parents and all of the
glitz and glamour that goes into it, and the controversy
surrounding kid beauty pageants, we wanted to take a look
at these strange events. Yes, people parading their babies around. Um,
(01:08):
you know, we were reading a lot of sources from
from you know, articles from overseas. In England Australia, people
were really upset about what they called American style child
beauty pageant and I'll just have you know they did
not originate in America. We just sort of took them
and ran with them. Right. There's this article if we
found in the Guardian newspaper over in the UK talking
(01:32):
about this recent rise and popularity of like you said,
Caroline needs American style child pageants. But hey Guardian, uh,
sorry to burst your British bubble, but we got them
from you in the first place. This is coming from
Hillary Levy Freedman, who was a sociologist as she went
(01:52):
to Harvard and she is an expert on beauty pageants
in general, especially child beauty pageants, and she traced it
back to John Ruskin, a British art critic, historian and
rumored pedophile who started the May Queen Festivals in eighteen
eighty one. Yes, to honor a girlish innocence. That just
(02:17):
sounds terrible. Um yeah, he would the the queen of
the May Queen Festivals had to be the likable, ist
and lovable list of all the maidens. That's a quote.
Um yeah. And then you know it's spread to North
America and we took it in, reigin with it, like
I said, and it became kind of turned into this
(02:38):
what they call systematic baby competition, right because they didn't
they didn't start with older, you know, like adolescent and
Jayton girls. No, they when when it came over to
the United States, they started out with parading babies, right,
went right for the baby jugular, the baby jugular right.
The most the most famous baby parade is it Asbury
(03:00):
Was it Asbury Park? Excuse me um? It was the
first baby parade ever held on the East Coast, and
it drew tens of thousands of spectators and it's heyday
in the eighteen nineties, And in nineteen o four, Thomas
Edison made one of his first movies about the event. Yeah,
and you can see it's really easy to find. I
want to say it was in the National Archives. I
ran across Edison's footage from that baby parade. So if
(03:23):
you want to, uh, take a look at what those
those baby parades were like. It's really what you would
think it is. It is. It's a parade of old
timey prems, times and carriages and A New York Times
article from nineteen eleven described the twenty feet annual Asbury
Park Baby Parade um saying that there were fifty thousand
(03:44):
people in attendance and there were five hundred and eighty
three children, all being paraded in. I cannot even imagine,
as someone who has recently been on a plane with children,
lots of them, all of them under i'd say four,
I cannot imagine being around this many children, not if
(04:04):
they're be you know, if they're even if they're being
like paraded around because they're so I wouldn't even go.
Let's be honest, I can't imagine. You know, babies are cute,
but I gotta say the the baby parades got a
little weird. Yeah, they got kind of weird. Um. First
of all, Coney Island, not surprisingly, ended up with the
(04:25):
most popular baby parade, had twelve hundred participants in its
first year, six hundred of whom were competing for the
title of most Beautiful Baby. And you know when those
babies one, when those babies got that blue ribbon, just
they continued to sit there and drink their bottle. Um. Yeah.
It actually it really thrived in the nineties and one
(04:46):
year a three year old girl in a harem costume
one and a six year old girl one and a
show girl get up? Are you kidding me? Like, isn't
that creepy? And it's weird that that reminds me though
there was a recent controversy about this this m paget
mom who dressed up her I don't know, she's probably
(05:07):
like four or five year old daughter. And as Julia
Roberts from the movie Pretty Women, I mean, they were
all pretty, but I'm thinking of like the movie match
ship between pretty women and little women. God, I hope
can we can somebody make that? I hope? So? But
you're right, yes, the costume game from Pretty Woman? Uh?
(05:31):
And and yes, which one the red dress, the tall boots,
the tall boots, and the white top. Anyway, Yes, so
the tradition continues of questionable costumes for very young young girls, right.
And it wasn't It wasn't just for girls. There were
competitions involving boys and still are. Another less than tasteful
(05:54):
contest was the heaviest boy under one year of age. Yes, well,
because that was this was this whole thing became part
of the healthy baby movement, especially in the nineteen twenties.
This was an aspect of us very controversial public health
initiatives that is tied in with eugenics. Yikes. And for
(06:19):
those of you who don't know about the eugenics movement,
it kind of basically advocated practices that would improve a
population's genetic makeup in very controversial ways. Yes, and so
because of that, these better Baby contests that started in
the eighteen fifties and really peaked in nineteen thirteen, placed
(06:40):
emphasis on the physical perfection of these babies. They would
weigh them, measure them, judge their personalities. Yeah, they were
stripped naked and judged on several points. I think that's terrible,
poor a little. I hopefully they blocked it out or
just didn't remember their babies. Hopefully they Well, it kind
of sounds like you know, the the Westminster Dog Show
(07:02):
when they have them up on the dogs up on
the little stage and they lift their ears up and
lift their tails up, and it kind of those better
babies lifting those baby's tales. But yeah, back then it
also must have been somewhat controversial. The last known healthy
Baby contest was held at the Iowa State Fair in
nineteen fifty two, around the time the beautiful Baby contests
(07:24):
and parades also began to peter out. But I found
some modern day baby parade and healthy baby contest links. Yeah,
there was one. There's one in Hawaii called the Meadow
Gold Dairies annual Healthy Baby Contest, and it's a tradition
since nineteen fifty three, which is the year after this
fact about the Iowa State Fair in nineteen fifty two,
(07:45):
And the quote on the website is hundreds of toddlers
compete for the title of owah, Who's Healthiest Baby. They're
judged off physical appearance, healthiness, and personality, with each category
scored on a fifty point scale. No, it sounds like
the exact same thing now. I think it's worth noting that, um,
the Beautiful Baby contests started to die out in the fifties,
(08:09):
partially because people were concerned about spreading polio in large
every time, but kind of. But at the same time,
you still hear similar arguments that people make against today's
child beauty pageants. For instance, this uh this nineteen thirty
six New York Times headline Baby Awards and Joy. Yeah,
(08:30):
they're just saying that, like all of competing for all
these prizes, the parents would go bonkers trying to get
uh their kids first place. They would take kids across
state lines so that they could compete in more pageants,
false identification and all that stuff. Yeah, people, these it's
really more about the crazy parents than the kids. Yeah,
kids probably didn't even know what was going on. I
(08:52):
get to dress up today. But then in nineteen fifty
eight we have child and teen pageants take off with
America's Junior Miss Paget, which was started by the j
CS of Mobile, Alabama. Which is kind of interesting that
the kid and teen pageant things starts in Mobile because
(09:13):
a lot of times it seems like, at least from
the portrayals on television, a lot of us is taking
place in the South. Right, And not to offend anyone
or get too controversial, but the Guardian article quotes Frank
uh Let's Furity Purity, You're ready, a professor of sociology
at the University of kent Um. You know, he talks
(09:36):
a little bit about what these uh pageants mean to
parents and their kids, and he says that in America
it's seen as a white trailer trash kind of thing,
and there's a real contempt for that. But if you
come from a middle class background and shove your child
into music lessons, that's okay. Parental aspiration requires acquires different forms,
but it's a very similar kind of impulse. I think
(09:58):
it has a point that parents are always having our
kids into something. Just that he just points out this
perception that seems to be kind of prevalent about who's
doing what activity right because and there's another study UM
conducted by Hillary Levey Freedman who we talked about UM,
who is from Harvard, who did the She's done extensive
(10:18):
sociological research on beauty pageants as well, and she interviewed
forty one mothers who participated in about five pageants a year.
So these these are kind of like the super moms
that we stereotype with the child beauty pageants. And her
study found that mothers of lower income and lower education
levels would typically enroll their daughters in these contests to
(10:41):
teach them proper skills to move up the social ladder right,
because you you know, you have contests for things like
poise and they're putting on makeup and they have to
do this special talent that they can use entertain people.
So I mean, I can understand it. Possibly from that perspective,
active it might be there might be better ways. But
(11:03):
going back to the emergence of of teen and child
pageants in the United States, I would like to point
out not only some notable pageants, but also some notable
pageant winners. Teen pageant winners, for instance, America's Junior Miss
pageant of nineteen sixty three, Diane Sawyer. What, yes, I
(11:24):
had no idea, I know, and she's a pretty lady.
I'm sure she was a pretty baby. No, I think
this was the team competence team. Okay, so I'm sure
she was a young woman. She was probably a pretty
baby too. But other America's Junior Miss pageant winners include
Deborah Norville, Kim Bay Singer, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Debora
(11:46):
Messing from Will and Grays. All Right, ladies, see they
used it to transition into show business? Was what? Um?
I think a lot of well, okay, I'm not gonna
say a lot, but I think, you know, some parents
hope that their kids can transition into show business. It
was kind of talked about in some of those Our Goals.
But I wonder how promising it is if, say, your
your child takes the top prize at other, you know,
(12:06):
less prestigious beauty pageants such as Miss Catfish Queen, Miss
Baby Poultry Princess, Miss American Beauty, Queen of Hearts, or
Miss American starlet fashion model, which I wish I could win.
Now this American stolid fashion model that sounds like something
out of like Jim in the Hologram. It does, it
absolutely does. Um, which you know I was Jim when
(12:27):
You're for Halloween. That's another podcast. Um. You know, not
everybody is very excited about these pageants though, Um Freedman
uh was talking about blah blah blah. Okay, okay, not
everybody's excited. So Freedman was actually contacted by a group
of concerned citizens in Australia because this past summer, um
(12:49):
there was going to be a young people's pageant. Yeah,
like the American style seeping out first over to the UK,
now to Australia. Yeah, just arkling the globe like a plague. Um.
And she told them to calm down. There's actually very
little data on the long term effects of pageant participation
(13:10):
or the families who participate. Um. She actually discusses the
positive effects. Uh, you know, kids learned to be confident
in front of an audience, and it can be fun
for some of these kids to dress up and unteract
interact with other children. But she also brings up some
of the problems the potential issues that could arise. Um.
One of the things that she points out is what
(13:30):
happens if a child, you know, they've been dressed up
and Primpton prodded for these for these pageants, spray tand
fake teeth. We saw some pictures of little girls with
fake teeth and fake hands and it is horrific. Yeah,
I mean it's and especially with the teeth they you know,
there's a reason why you know, kids have baby teeth
(13:51):
that fall out and then when you're an adult you
have the adult teeth. Kids with adult teeth. It does
look very unnatural. Yeah. Um, but she she point it's
out that a child looking in the mirror and not
recognizing herself could be really confusing and traumatic for the child,
and it might reinforce the idea that she's only pretty
with these fake teeth, dyed hair, fake tan. I mean,
(14:14):
that's the thing. Like, I get what the point she's
trying to make about saying, like, well, it teaches them
confidence in front of an audience. It can be fun interaction. Okay,
if you want confidence in front of an audience, there
are things like theater, improv how about team sports if
you want to interact or piano for skills like there
are certainly options out there that aren't Number one, like
(14:37):
judging your child on her beauty Yeah, and and possibly
a questionable wardrobe choices yeah she um. She references a
two thousand five article and the journal Eating Disorders that
discusses links between beauty pageant participation and eating disorders. Um.
She said that childhood pageant participants scored higher on body
(14:59):
dissatisfact and the non participants, and participation may lead to
difficulty trusting interpersonal relationships and greater impulsive behavior, but it doesn't. Actually,
she says that it's not statistically significant its effects on
bulimic behaviors, body perception, depression, and self esteem basically because girls,
(15:19):
whether they are pageant participants are not, are so inundated
by media images promoting this thin ideal for for women,
this unnatural thinness that it doesn't make It doesn't make
them anymore likely to develop and eating disorder. But I
think we should also point out that this was a
really small example of population. It was twenty two uh participants,
(15:42):
eleven of whom had done the pageants. Right. Um, actually, ah,
this makes me so sad. But the the girls who
are I'm sorry. The young They were young women at
this point. The survey was done between nineteen, and they
were more likely to think of them selves as larger. Yeah,
whether I mean no matter, because they were paired. The
(16:04):
eleven girls who had participated in pageants as kids were
paired with counterparts of similar age, weight, whatever, who had not,
And the pageant participants were more likely to think of
themselves as large and also had a greater preference for um,
kind of acquiring a smaller figure. Yeah, probably because they
were used to standing up on stage, you know, sandwiched
(16:26):
between like other other thin girls. Right. But you know,
she does point out that there is a difference here
between the pageant and non pageant participants, but it wasn't
completely statistically significant however, Um, you know, she does point
out that all of these girls were um exposed to
you know, lots of media, you know, thin images, images
(16:50):
of thin women in magazines and TV and all that,
so they were all sort of affected by it. Yeah.
I think with all of the all of the articles
that we read, aside from the parents who were their
children in these pageants, and some of the girls interviewed,
to be fair, some of them said that they enjoy it.
You know, you'll see that on some of the television shows.
The kids seem to be into it. But at the
end of the day, it does seem like it's something
(17:12):
very much orchestrated by the parents and especially the mothers,
who get really into this whole pageant cycle. And there
was aside from those people, there was no one in
any of these articles that was like, yeah, I mean,
pageants are good for kids. It was always like, maybe
it qualified, well, you might have a couple of benefits.
And if you're talking to a psychologists as there was
(17:34):
always no, no, it's really not good. But I think
maybe one of the reasons why there isn't more empirical
data on on how these this pageant cycle affects kids
is because there are around three thousand children's pageants per
year in the US, attracting more than a hundred thousand contestants.
And while that seems like a lot, I mean, while
(17:55):
you know, it might seem kind of crazy that perhaps
kids do compete for Miss Baby Poultry Princess, but a
hundred thousand contestants, that's that is a small slice of
of the entire population in that in that group, not
to say that because it's a relatively small group of
people than we shouldn't care. But that just might, it
might be one of the reasons why there isn't more.
(18:17):
I also talk about how difficult it is to study children,
you know, to get children to participate, uh in in
in research like that, and it would probably be a
little more difficult with this group to separate the filter
out their parents influence from what they actually want to do, right,
especially you know, at such a young age, how do
you know that it's what they want? And uh The
(18:39):
University of Kent sociology professor who's quoted in the Guardian
sort of points that out and he says that, um,
no child is autonomous. If a child says this is
what I want to do, it's generally not a hundred
miles away from what the parent wants. What one sees
here is adult fantasies fueling this thing. It's for adults,
and here's the thing to um because the sociologist is
(19:01):
also the one who is saying that it appeals more
to um lower socio economic groups, which is kind of
ironic because beauty child beauty pageants are a huge financial investment.
The parents are making some people are taking out loans.
Some of these pageants end up costing parents tens of
(19:21):
thousands of dollars. I can't think of all the shoes
or you know, college education or whatever. But I mean
to to enter America's Gorgeous Girl. To get sure, if you,
if you had a little if you wanted to enter
me Caroline and America's Gorgeous Girl, it would cost you dollars. Now,
if I wanted to enter you, and I wish I
(19:42):
could in the Ultimate Supreme at Southern Sparkles and Smiles
and that is Smiles with a Z, it would cost
me four dollars just to get you on that stage,
not to mention the fake tan i'd have to give you.
I know my Scottish background is I look scared in
photos sometimes. Um yeah, I mean you've got to consider
(20:03):
training photos, hair and makeup clothes. I mean some you know,
people are getting custom gowns made for their little girls
because they're just going to grow out of It just
makes me sick. Um yeah. And let's you know, not forget.
They point out this is on banquet dot com where
they're talking about all the money that goes into it. Um,
and they mentioned that the parents who serve as managers
(20:25):
for their children can get way too involved, and these
parents typically end up having a far less stable and
positive relationship with their children. I mean, can you imagine
so if you get involved so involved in the in
the circuit that you would need some kind of managerial figure.
The parent might want to bring in some kind of
pageant assistance, even more money. And a pageant expert points
(20:46):
out in the article that Bally lessons are worth it
for poise, but tanning sessions are not. The judges sometimes
think they look silly and they do on on grown
up people too, And they should also save their money
from buying colored contacts because those apparently freak out judges
and myself and absolutely Paris Hilton, that goes out to you.
(21:06):
But like you know, children and children colored contexts. But
I think that's exactly the point. That the fact that
parents would consider temporarily changing their young child's eye color
and putting in, you know, fake adult teeth and spray
training them down in order to win what a tiara,
a sash, a gift certificate to a local superstore, it
(21:33):
just doesn't seem worth. It doesn't seem worth it either.
I mean think, and I know everyone has different priorities,
everybody is different. Everybody has a thing. It's my motto.
Everybody has a thing. Um. But you know, just think
about all the money that these people are spending and
they could be spending it on something else, maybe investing
it if they're if they're concerned about you know, getting
(21:53):
their moving their daughters up some kind of social ladder,
maybe they should invest it in I don't know, education,
if they've got that money, put it into college. But
I don't know. I mean, I'm not their parents, but
it definitely seems like there are far better investments than uh,
sparkle and glitz. Although you know, the title of the
Ultimate supremea Southern sparkles and smiles would be would be something.
(22:14):
And I just would like to point out that I
still have a mental image circulating in my brain from
the poultry thing of a baby dressed in a chicken suit,
just like to that this baby poultry princess indeed picturing
well either that or you know, I don't know. Yeah,
well I think we've I think we've gone about as
far as we can with child. But there's so much there,
(22:35):
and especially I mean just the fact that uh, that
the baby parades are connected in some way to eugenics.
That just gets the whole thing off on an awkward foot.
And I don't know, but you know what I want
to hear from UM if any listeners have actually participated
in pageants when they were kids, because you know, I
grew up with a I knew a couple of girls
growing up who actually did like young Lady modeling and
(22:58):
and it was the same thing. Their parents were like,
we're and I give you confidence because you're pretty and
confidence in whatever. And that's the only way you should
be able to find confidence as a woman is to
have someone else tell you that you're pretty enough to
be liked. Right makes me feel sad, So write us
send us your emails anyone who has any thoughts on pageants,
mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is the address.
(23:19):
In the meantime, we got a couple of emails here
on our women in Science episode, and this is from
a listener who wishes to remain anonymous. UM. She wrote
in after listening to our science podcasts UM. She said,
another woman who had an amazing scientific breakthrough, although not
known for being a scientist, is Hetty Lamar. The actress.
(23:43):
She is best known for inventing frequency hopping spread spectrum technology,
originally invented during World War Two from asking radio signals
for torpedoes. Although I don't think it was used until
the nineties, it is now a major building block to
cell phone technology. She invented other stuff as well, and
was really interested in science. I find her fascinating. You
(24:05):
can have brains and beauty also. I actually have a
degree in electrical engineering. When I graduated in the nineties,
my graduation class was only ten percent women. I did
an internship within this field, but when offered a job
after graduation, didn't accept it for several reasons. One of
the reasons was that the workplace environment was obviously dominated
by men and really wasn't comfortable for me. It wasn't
(24:26):
that there was any type of discrimination, it just was
not a group that I felt I would enjoy working
with because I had nothing in common with them and
didn't feel I fit in on a personal level, which
is a big part of the workplace experience. I ended
up taking a job with an I T Consulting, so
still stem and love it. Most entry level positions at
the time were fairly equal between men and women, and
(24:48):
I found it to be a better and more balanced
working environment. Well, I've got one here from Jessica, and
while she started out as a chemistry major in college,
she ended up switching to Spanish education, and she makes
an interesting point about gender in the education field. And
as she said, the education field is positively overrun by women,
(25:08):
and what few men are there are relegated to specific fields,
usually agricultural science or physical education. I did know a
couple of guys in either social science or English education,
but funnily enough, I never met a guy from math
education or science education field, although there was one token mail.
In elementary education, gender was a topic we touched on
(25:29):
in multiple education classes. Because so many teachers are female,
it's important to make our male students feel included. So
that's kind of that's that's one observation to maybe, as
we're talking a lot about the dearth of women in science,
maybe there's a dearth of men in education that we
should touch on a NATO podcast indeed, and again our
email addresses Mom's Stuff at how Stuff Works dot com,
(25:50):
and as always, you can check us out over on
Facebook and follow us on Twitter at moms Stuff Podcast
and during the week you can check out the blog
it's stuff Mom Never told of You at how stuff
works dot com. Be sure to check out our new
video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work
staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities
(26:14):
of tomorrow. The How Stuff Works iPhone app has arrived.
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