The scary new trend in kiddie beauty pageants: BOYS

Let’s file this under D for disturbia.

I’ve been watching a bit of Foxtel’s Toddlers & Tiara’s lately and it’s horrifying. My husband walks past the TV and I say “COME AND LOOK AT THIS! OH MY GOD” and he keeps saying “Turn it off. It’s appalling and it’s upsetting you. Why do you watch it?”

He’s right. But it’s hard to look away.

For years, little girls have been dressed up like Vegas showgirls by their parents to compete against other showgirls children. Now little boys get a turn.

I’ve always been baffled by the parents who inhabit this troubling world of kiddie beauty pageants. And after the shocking murder of 6 year old JonBenet Ramsay in 1996, the rest of us got a frightening insight into an industry we never knew existed.

For a decade after JonBenet’s murder (her murderer was never caught and police have always linked to her high profile in the pageant world), the pageant business pretty much went bust.

Until now. Over the past few years there’s been a huge resurgence of parents who want nothing more than to turn their children into human dolls. These kids are forced to spend their free time having spray tans, pedicures, ‘pageant coaching’ and costume fittings. They have false nails and eyelashes applied. Their hair is often dyed.

I know. And hold onto your lunch. The latest disturbing trend is pageants for boys.

According to a news report in the Daily Mail

Strutting his stuff on stage, Max Bennington was proud to look just like his idol, pop star Peter Andre.

With his highlighted hair arranged just so, his bronzed torso bared and his jeans worn rakishly low on his hips, he belted out a Boyzone hit to impress the judges.

Later, Max paraded in a white suit and bow tie, twirling around to show off his physique. If you got up close, you could even catch a whiff of his designer aftershave.

Young Max was taking part in a disturbing trend that has come from the U.S. and is sweeping Britain: male beauty pageants, where boys as young as two gyrate on stage in a crude and alarming approximation of male sexuality.

While many people feel that, at best, such events teach children to be concerned only with their looks, at worst, it makes them a chilling target for paedophiles.

Max’s mother, Jayne Harris, is one such parent. Before entering Max into these contests, she was happily supporting her daughter Sasha’s beauty pageant career.

‘Max has his hair highlighted, and I buy him gel so he can wear it spiked. We recently went on holiday to Turkey, and Max had a henna tattoo done in the style of Peter Andre’s. ‘He’s tanned from the holiday, and he likes to look good. He’s used to having all the girls after him.’

This is a BBC documentary made about Max’s sister Sasha.  You have to ask what it is that is driving Mr and Mrs Bennington…..

The Bennington family are not alone in this bizarre mission to turn their children into dolls.  The pageant industry is a huge business bringing in millions of dollars of revenue for the pageant organisers.  On average children in these pageants spend 90 seconds on stage but take months to prepare, literally years off their lives as they transform from children into a human Barbie or Ken doll.

What is it that makes parents enter their children into these competitions? Seriously, what? The prize money? Most parents admit they spend tens of thousands of dollars on their children’s pageant careers (I can’t believe we’re even using the word careers to talk about children), much more than they could ever win back.

To me it is quite simply parents objectifying their kids. Turning them into dolls for…what purpose? Some reflected glory? To satisfy their own childish pleasure in playing with Barbie and Ken?

What do you think?