My Findings

I have to admit that while I do have a much better understanding of why people participate in beauty pageants after doing the research that I have done for this blog, I still do not completely agree with everything they stand for. I do think that the intentions behind pageants are good and are very important. The scholarship opportunities offered through these organizations are great and teaching young women to be well rounded in talent and intelligence is also positive. However, the way that pageants are set up is contradictory to these values. The higher level pageants like Miss America give young girls another size zero perfect model to look up to and in a society where girls are taught to hate their bodies at such a young age, this is the last thing that we need. Pageants for girls as young as two might be a fun outlet if the girls do not focus on doing whatever it takes to win and try to have fun. However, for a lot of girls this is not the case. Someone has to win and make it to the USA and World pageants and this means that not all of the girls are taking pageants lightly. Telling a girl of two years old that in order to be a winner she has to be not only pretty but the prettiest is not the way to instill confidence in a child. True, the aesthetics of a contestant might be only 30% of her total value in the competition, but it is an important 30%. I would like to see pageant officials make changes in the way they judge or how they hold to competition in order to show women and young girls alike that beauty is not the most important thing and that perfection is unattainable. I don’t know if this is possible but it would be interesting to see an effort put in to this.