Little Miss Bayside

On Wednesday April 7th, I nearly choked on my wheaties when reading the morning paper to discover that a beauty pageant for children (inspired by US TV shows) called Little Miss Bayside will be held in Brighton in the next few months. This antediluvian throwback of a competition, which costs $100 will see tiny tots model swimwear and be judged on their smile and posture.

Organiser Laura Buik was reported in the Herald Sun as saying that US shows Toddlers & Tiaras and Baby Beauty Queens had sparked interest here and said that the Melbourne winners would get a tiara, but the main prizes would be a modelling contract and a three-day workshop. The news sparked great reactions from some Psychologists like Andrew Fuller who told the media that pageants such as these could lead to competition, anxiety and embarrassment. He said "...This is a good recipe for how to predispose your daughter into having an eating disorder...the risk is that they suddenly fear that their body shape is more important than their intellect." Also prominent was Pyschologist Dr Janet Hall who said pageants taught children that looks were more important than a good heart. It makes a competition out of being more grown up than you are."

Julie Gale (Kids Free to be Kids), Dr Joe Tucci (the Australian Childhood Foundation and I have called for a ban on such pageants for under 14 year olds, which was immediaely dismissed by the State government.

This inaction is puzzling given the long-standing and current overwhelming opinion in the psychology community concerning children's beauty pageants. Namely, that they are not in the best interests of healthy child development. There is enough undue, exaggerated focus on superficial beauty in this culture without children being pitted against each other in a contest of looks.

I have heard all the arguments defending these contests and they all appear to be self-serving defences with no apparent regard to the considerable body of research that demonstrates why they are harmful to kids. I know that people say, "There are other things they're judged on besides their looks; it teaches them poise, it gives them confidence." But the hard fact remains they are called BEAUTY pageants and they have been and always will be based on using arbitrary standards of "beauty" to make one contestant better than all the rest.

If you sense considerable passion and concern you are correct. 1 in 5 young people have a psychological problem in schools, mood and anxiety disorders are increasing, and I see the pain of adolescents (and their parents) struggling with eating disorders, not to mention the young woman in my office last week pleading with me to convince her parents to let her get plastic surgery because she can't continue living looking so ugly (always compared to the popular media's presentation of what is beautiful), I think that children's beauty pageants (and this is mostly a girl's/women's issue) do a great disservice to the winners, the losers, and all children.