Beauty from Within

Why do we allow girls to look elsewhere?

If you have ever watched the TLC channel then you are probably familiar with the reality show Toddlers and Tiaras. It documents North American families who have young girls, and at times boys, between the ages of three and ten who compete in beauty pageants. Disgusted already? So was I. Some may argue that beauty pageants can provide children with social skills, however, they also teach them a false perception of beauty.

Not only are children participating in beauty pageants, but mothers, and perhaps fathers, are as well. In an episode called the ‘Texas Walk of Fame,’ one Mom tells viewers that “pageants can be very addictive.

Once you start winning, there’s no turning back.” Another Mom says, “I could turn my little boys into little girls. These are my girls that I never had.” The first comment suggests that some mothers may be more concerned with winning beauty pageants than the effect the pageants have on their children, while the second suggests that some mothers may also be more interested in converting, rather than accepting, their children. These issues aside, other mothers may feel comfort in believing that beauty pageants raise their children’s self-esteem. However, this self-esteem only emerges when a child is able to look like the woman on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine. This obviously includes the full face of make-up, false hair and, yes, even fake teeth and fake tans. Beauty pageants actually tell children that they need to look a certain way in order to feel and be beautiful.

In the same episode, a five-year-old girl tells viewers that when she “gets tanned her skin looks brown and pretty.” I think that we need to ask ourselves, what is “pretty” in Western society and what does it really mean to be “pretty”? Girls who compete in beauty pageants, and many other young women, learn to make, mold, and shape themselves into what the media tells them is beautiful. And thus it is only with these things that most girls–even women–feel valuable. Unlike what this show and so many others convey, beauty is actually socially constructed.

Furthermore, pageants also teach girls to compete against, not work with, other girls. And no doubt, their mothers also compete against other mothers. Instead of working together, girls are thrust into a world where they aim to achieve something that they may not actually feel from within, and all by competing against other girls (think of The Bachelor, where one woman’s looks battles against another’s). In Toddlers and Tiaras, girls compete in order to win money and a title, but in other shows they often compete in order to gain men’s approval. In her article published in Metro News Vancouver on June 18th, 2009, Canice Leung writes that young women are told to “grow up, be smart, take responsibility […] but in practice they’re not often given that agency,” which is why she encourages girls everywhere to write down their feelings in order to create a space, or using Virginia Woolf’s theory, a “room” of their own.

Instead of suffering through this show, why not change the channel to Jessica Simpson’s new show that airs in January called The Price of Beauty. It acknowledges that beauty is socially constructed and not an object that women can become if they try hard enough. Simpson will be travelling to countries across the world to find out what each country considers beautiful and what women, and men, do to try to achieve it.

I write this article not just for young women, but for women of all ages, race, class, and sexuality. I want us all to know that although it may not be simple or easy, by finding your own space you can begin to discover what makes you beautiful from within, not without.