So if the daughter is the one pushing for it and the parents are hesitant...will that effect the teens confidence too do you think?

To me, pageant are about beauty queens; which means we are emphasizing the wrong thing. Why should girls have to strive to be beauty queens? They should be competing in academics and sports, in my opinion. Succeeding as a beauty queen prepares you for a life as a beauty queen - which means you are useless without someone else's support. It is the wrong message to send to a young girl.

I think it might make her lose confidence, thinking her parents see her as ugly or untalented.

It's a tricky situation. I think if I had a daughter and she wanted to compete, then I'd support her and hopefully teach her that she should see them as fun, but not as a total judgment on if she's "beautiful" or "talented". So if she loses she won't think she's a failure in life, but to more see it as just a loss when other successes in life will come.


I don't know where I stand. I partially agree with you, and even feel too many young women today have the wrong role models. When they were idolizing people like Paris Hilton and Britney Spears...that was bad. Even women who idolize the cast of Sex and the City need to rethink their lives.

HOWEVER, lately there has been the complaints in society that men don't see women as "feminine" anymore. Too many women trying to take on roles traditionally looked at as male roles...and for some men it scares them because they see themselves losing power in life, but others look at these women and don't see them as "feminine" anymore.

I'm not saying women should be housewives, nurses, secretaries, etc...but even when I read the book "Unhooked Generation", author Jillian Strauss even mentioned women who did a 180 on the Women's Movement simply because they felt by trying to follow the Women's Movement, they will end up alone...that the ideas of Women's Lib meant men won't see them as marriage material.

It's a tricky thing, but I think even the beauty queen can grow up to be a strong good feminine woman. It really comes down to the parents and how they raise her. If they raise her to be a good girl, go to school, be the best she can be at what she does...then she'll be fine. If they raise her on the idea that if she's not a pageant winner then she's ugly and will end up marrying a truck driver, then she'll grow up under the idea that looks mean everything in the world.

I had a friend that was in one. She has not suffered any bad effects from being in it.

Ugly women marry truck drivers? That is insulting to truck drivers and ugly women both.

I don't think traditional femininity is worth all that much. It's just a way for men to feel stronger than women. I don't buy into it and would not want to be with a man who did. If that means I am not marriage material, so be it. I need a man who is confident enough about his own masculinity that he does not need someone in lace batting her eyes and fixing him dinner.

Oh jeez...I guess then I posted a bad example then. Apologies.

The point was more trying to display the damage parents can do to a young girl when they raise her on the idea that her only goals in life would be to look pretty and find a husband. When they teach her the illogic that she should value her looks above everything else in life.

Oh jeez...I guess then I posted a bad example then. Apologies.

The point was more trying to display the damage parents can do to a young girl when they raise her on the idea that her only goals in life would be to look pretty and find a husband. When they teach her the illogic that she should value her looks above everything else in life.

Amen (((Hiker)))!

And that is exactly the mentality that pageants promote.

Well...if you could go and change them (but not abolish them), what would you do?

NOT THIS

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww

She had stage fright. Give her a break! hehe...

Is that one of the Bush girls?

am sorry but those little girls all done up to look grown up and the way they pose...i find it terribly sad

The Miss Teen Missouri doesn't allow more than lip gloss from what I've been told. That's all she's allowed to wear anyway, so it'd best be true.

I like little girls to look like little girls and not Barbie myself.