News Flash: Barbie Gone Bad

Most of us played with Barbie dolls when we were little. Barbie and Ken—they were the dream couple with dream bodies and beautiful faces. But when did the features of a doll become the ideal features for humans? It’s easy to make a perfect body and perfect face for a doll, but it should not be the body and face that men and women strive for, and most certainly not the body that little girls desire. "Toddlers in Tiaras" is a television show that is broadcast on TLC in which girls shave their legs, wear revealing clothing, get spray tans, have fake teeth, wear loads of make-up, and parade across a stage in a beauty pageant to win money, succumb to society, and please their mothers. But the girls are losing so much more than they are gaining by being in these pageants. They are losing their childhood, and they are being taught and practically forced to look one way—like a Barbie. Pageant girls are being taught that they only have one to thing offer, and that is their body. These girls are a product of raunch culture and if girls continue to be portrayed as sexual objects starting practically in the womb, things are only going to get worse.

There used to be a time when women didn’t wear make-up, do their hair, shave their legs and underarms, a time when the definition of beautiful was natural. That time is long over. Because the standards for looking good have been dramatically altered, girls are going out of their way and spending a frivolous amount of money to do whatever they can to look as good as possible. Jessica Bennett, a writer for Newsweek, writes, “On a recent Sunday in Brooklyn, I stumble into a spa that brands itself for the zero-to-12 set, full of tweens getting facialed and glossed, hands and feet outstretched for manis and pedis. Sounds extreme? Maybe. But this, my friends, is the new normal: a generation that primps and dyes and pulls and shapes, younger and with more vigor. Girls today are salon vets before they enter elementary school. They have spa days and pedicure parties. And instead of shaving their legs the old-fashioned way--with a 99-cent drugstore razor--teens get laser hair removal, the most common cosmetic procedure of that age group. If these trends continue, by the time your tween hits the Botox years, she'll have spent thousands on the beauty treatments once reserved for the 'Beverly Hills, 90210' set, not junior highs in Madison.” The media is corrupting little girls, advising them that looks are everything. Joan Brumberg, author of “Body Projects,” writes, “This elaboration of the ideal of beauty raised expectations of what adolescent girls should look like. It also required them to put even more energy and resources into their body projects, beginning at an earlier age (109).” Little girls who haven’t even gone through puberty are becoming sexual objects; it’s awful. If girls are taught at this young of age that their body is everything, then their entire life will be about looks instead of brains or other dreams that they have. It’s simply not right; life should be more than physical appearance.

Beautiful has been redefined, and not in a positive way. “Toddlers and Tiaras” is sending the message to little girls that if they’re not beautiful, well, they have nothing going for them. Kristen Shamus, a writer for The Detroit Free Press, says, “The behavior chronicled on 'Toddlers & Tiaras' is just plain sad. The message these poor kids are getting is that they're only worthwhile if they're pretty, and that the only way to be pretty is to cake on makeup and wear false teeth and revealing clothes. When children lose and go home crying, they also leave with the message that they aren't pretty enough, and therefore are no good at all.”

Little girls are not supposed to be wearing pounds of make-up and revealing clothing and spending their weekends strutting their stuff across a stage. They should be waking up on the weekends and watching cartoons. They should not have fake teeth to fill in the gaps where their baby teeth have fallen out. These girls should embrace the gaps in their mouth and anxiously wait for the tooth fairy to put a dollar under their pillow. Tears are often the outcome for everyone except the lucky winner of the beauty pageant. Society is instilling the idea that looks are all women have, the most important feature for a woman. This is preposterous; little girls should be taught that it is their personality and their goals in life that make them beautiful, not their skimpy outfits and fake smiles. Frankly, the winner of the pageant doesn’t even look like a little girl but rather a Barbie or American Girl doll come to life. Apparently, the plastic Barbie doll look is many a little girl's dream, or the dream of their mothers.

Society is manipulating these little girls into participating in these pageants. But society at large is not doing all the damage; a lot of it comes from the pageant mothers. It’s the girls' mothers who force them into it in the first place. Kids look up to their parents, they follow their lead; in a little girl's mind, her mother has the answer to everything. But moms are far from role models when they force their children into pageants. Nicki Britton, a writer for The Houston Chronicle, writes, “I won't go into the fact that emphasizing a girl's appearance over other talents, interests and achievements is demeaning and archaic. Or that forcing young children to perform for adults is misguided. My problem is that what your child observes you spending your time on is what she will believe you value. If you spend hours and hours each week, plus in some cases tens of thousands of dollars, prepping for pageants, you are signaling that's what you hold important. Those are hours spent not reading, not engaging in conversation, not exploring the world.”

If a little girl sees her mother dedicating her days and nights to pageant life and make-up and silly routines, this little girl is going to believe that that is what women should do, that it is what’s right. This is not what we should be teaching girls of a new generation -- it’s simply adding to sexism; it’s a step backwards in the feminist movement. We should be telling girls that they can do whatever boys can do, that they can be President of the United States if that’s what they want, that no dream is too big.

Girls should not be primping themselves during childhood, they should be immersed in school and play dates and finding out their likes and dislikes, not what nail polish color they prefer. However, pageant girls are spending their days in salons, as Nicki Britton says. They’re wasting their precious childhood getting their spray tan on and their hair done—simply to please their mothers.

Women’s priorities should not be their looks, but their brains. Unfortunately, that’s not the message that the mothers of these pageants girls are sending their daughters. Nicki Britton writes, “'Toddlers & Tiaras' is so gross it fails even as a guilty pleasure for me. Parading preschoolers in strapless ball gowns, hairpieces, fake teeth and spray tans past judges is at best a demonstration of poor priorities and at worst an attempt by the mothers to use their children to recapture their own fleeting moments of the past.” Mothers should be focusing more on what their daughters dreams and goals are, not trying to capture a dream of theirs through their daughters. Pageant mothers should not try to vicariously live through their daughters, but help their daughters create their own dreams.

While these pageant mothers may be trying to live through their daughters, society also plays a huge role in influencing these little girls to participate in pageants. Everywhere we look—commercials, movies, TV shows, billboards--we see another model, another perfect and skinny body. No wonder little girls want to look like that; those women are put on a pedestal. “Female Chauvinist Pigs” are starting at younger ages. Ariel Levy, author of the book “Female Chauvinist Pigs," writes, “ I believe that there is a porno-ization of the culture…what that means is that if you watch every single thing that’s going on out there in the popular culture, you will see females scantily clad, implanted, dressed up like hookers, porn stars and so on, and that this is very acceptable (19).” It should not at all be acceptable for little girls to look like hookers. Society should not be telling girls that this is okay, that it’s the norm. Having a 5-year old girl flaunt her body, and suggest that that is all she has to offer, is wrong. We need to move forward in the feminist movement, and it seems that we’ve only moved backwards, and starting at a younger age.

One of the biggest issues with the crude "Toddlers & Tiaras" is that it’s persuading girls to grow up faster than they should. Make-up and bras and pedicures are all fine, but not until a specific point. These pageant girls are practically being born with a manicure. Childhood is an essential part of life, a time when things are simple, and every human should have the privilege of experiencing it. These mothers are taking that from their daughters, robbing them of their innocence. So, girls, take off your make-up, your hairpiece, your skimpy clothes, your fake teeth, your spray tan, and forget about Barbie. Be a kid—a kid who is happy with her own body.