My brother in law, William Quick, a physician living in South Carolina has called me a pervert because I compared the display of female children in child beauty pageants to child prostitution.
He even called me a pervert and threatened to have my employer have me incarcerated in a mental hospital if I did not take down a post comparing children in a beauty pageant to kids being used as prostitutes at the Super Bowl.
Bill has a lot of company here in the US. The reality show “Toddlers & Tiaras,”has been ratings magic for the cable channel TLC. And then there is Alana “Honey Boo Boo” I wonder if Bill is merely defending free speech or does he watch this pornography?
The French .. despite their famous love of sex among adults, seem more concerned than Bill for child welfare. If French lawmakers get their way, there would be no French version of “Toddlers & Tiaras” and no French “Honey Boo Boo,” referring to another child pageant reality star. The Senate in France voted to ban child beauty pageants for kids under the age of 16 and now the measure goes to the country’s lower house for debate and a vote.
Where did this anti-pageant momentum come from on the part of the French? Some lawmakers point to a controversial photo spread in Vogue back in 2010, featurin
g a girl as young as 10 in high heels and sexy makeup.
The pageants are sexualizing our young girls, said lawmakers in France, and judging by the response to our request for comment on CNN’s Facebook page, many people in the United States agree.
“How pleased I am that, finally, some are fully awakened and realizing that child beauty pageants should be banned,” said Darlene Eckerman of Amarillo, Texas, in an e-mail message. “The mothers are the culprits here: teaching your child to be sexy and alluring at such a young, tender age when they are not ready for such exploitation.”
“To paint makeup on their faces and do up their hair, etc., OMG, wake up people,” said Charlie Caissie. “These are children for heaven’s sake, not adults. Let them decide for themselves at an appropriate age if they want to pursue this when they are adults.”
Psychologist Wendy Walsh said the danger here is normalizing behavior that once would have been considered extreme and weird. “And now it seems perfectly OK for a little 6-year-old to be walking around in thigh-high boots and short booty shorts and smacking her butt when she dances down a runway? Come on! That’s what a stripper does.”
Adult-inspired lingerie marketed for young girls
Of course, Bill might agree with some of the Americans who chimed in at CNN:
Anna Berry of Littleton, Colorado, said her 13-year-old daughter Ashley was so shy she couldn’t even order for herself at a restaurant. After she started appearing in “natural” pageants (no makeup allowed), she blossomed. And now, as “Miss Heartland Junior Teen,” she speaks to young girls across the country about her experiences with bullying, something she encountered when girls were jealous of her success on the pageant circuit.
“She’s a role model to many and her confidence to stand up and speak out came from her improved self-esteem through pageantry,” said Berry, who says Ashley can out interview and speak more confidently than most adults.”These are skills that will benefit her for a lifetime … just as they did for me growing up in pageantry.”
Valerie Best, director of The BEST Shining Stars Pageant located in Southern Indiana, is also strongly against banning pageants for young girls and boys.
She said just because some pageant systems “push it too far” (hers, she said, does not allow “fake hair, fake tans, fake teeth or a lot of makeup”), they most definitely should not be outlawed.
“Society is too quick to judge something they are not familiar with,” said Best. ” A pageant (run) properly is no different than a young girl competing in gymnastics, a school function or anything else that has a score kept or judged upon. Teach these girls to be strong, confident individuals and see how far they go in life.”‘
Wynn Westmoreland of Atlanta appeared in school pageants beginning in the sixth grade and competed in the University of Georgia pageant, which is part of the Miss America program. She does not believe in a legal ban.
“It’s not a government issue,” said Westmoreland. “It’s a social issue and it’s a family issue.” She believes the pageant bodies should get together and create a new rule only allowing girls to enter when they are at an age when they can choose what they want to do for themselves, around 9, 10 or 11. “I do not like it when children who are not able to make choices on their own are forced to be in pageants and that is when I see the over-glamorization of young girls,” “They don’t even look like children anymore. They look like objects.”
I must be a prude, I agree with the comment:
“Every time I think about child beauty pageants, my heart sinks at the thought of all the pedophiles watching them. Why in the world do children need to be so sexualized?” asked a CNN reader.
Child beauty pageants are just another obscene extravagance of the filthy rich. The working class don’t have time or money for this kind of stuff.
For those very few of you who are following this drivel:
I have challenged the author (SMS) to produce any e-mail or other documentation that I ever used the word “pervert” to describe him. There is no such documentation to the best of my recollection, nor in searches I’ve done of my e-mails and on this website.
Quoting my e-mail to him: “I cannot locate any document, either in my e-mail files nor on your website, where I have accused you of being a pervert, or being perverted. You have repeatedly claimed that I have done so (e.g., at “My brother in law, William Quick, a physician living in South Carolina has called me a pervert” Please forward me the relevant document to your claim I have called you “perverted”, or used the term “pervert” in reference to yourself, if you have one.”
He is unable to produce any such correspondence, responding (twice!) via e-mail only that “You are free to comment on TA.”
He fails to understand that writing nasty things about his family and lies about his “family feud” is of no interest to the general public, and only undermines his case if he follows through on his repeated threats to launch more litigation against his family and his father’s estate’s co-executor.
A warning to the average reader: The author of this blog (##################### personal email address deleted) makes statements on this blog that are sometimes misleading and sometimes fiction. For example, he writes at http://handbill.us/?p=28297 “As executor of my father’s estate, Hugh Schwartz has now prevented Robert Schwartz’ pictures from being published for almost six years.” Indeed, it is SMS who has held up the donation of the estate’s WWII memorabilia to a major University by (a) withholding some of the materials at his residence in Seattle despite his signing off on an agreement to return them to Hugh and (b) failing to sign off on a Deed of Gift to donate the materials.
I am writing this long comment, then will maintain a screen shot of it in case he chooses to edit it.
Thank you for the post. Perhaps you would go further and explain you own beliefs about these pageants? Have you been to one? Why was it so important to you that you complained about TA to a radio station in Saskatchewan and a photographer in Australia? If you would prefer to write a long essay, please submit it to me and I will gladly post oit on TA with whatever tags you want.
Of course you are also free to comment on Buchenwald. My freedom to comment is more limited since, as you know, we are in legal contention with Hugh Schwartz and Martin Miasserian as executors of the Robert Schwartz estate, to get these materials preserved and put in the public domain. Because of the contention, I do not think I can say more, but you are welcome to give your opinion here on TA.
As we are now just a month before the 70th anniversary of my fathers arrival in the camps, TA will be discussing the importance of the materials made available to the public, esp. to the few folks still surviving.
As for the picture here, I would have hoped that Dr. Quick would have joined me in condemning this exploitation of children.