Criticism
Parents of children are sometimes criticized for entering their children in pageants. For instance, Shelby Colene Pannell, a sociologist, questions why parents would subject their children to gender socialization because pageants are the perfect setting for the” traditional” type of femininity. These young girls are being exposed to things such as makeup and spray tans at a very young age, making these families a target for criticism.
Families on TLC’s hit television series Toddlers & Tiaras are especially criticized for negatively influencing their children that their physical appearance will score them attention and prizes. The show first aired in 2009 and follows the child participants and their parents as they prepare for the upcoming beauty pageant of the weekend. The show is non-narrated to avoid showing opinion and has sparked heavy controversy in the last few years, due to actions including allowing a child to smoke a fake cigarette during the talent portion of the competition, forcing a child to wear fake breasts, a parent who allowed her child to dress like a prostitute in the “outfit of choice” category, feeding a child “pageant crack,” a mixture of sugar and high-calorie sweeteners to provide the necessary energy needed to perform well on the runway, and waxing/threading a child’s facial and body hair to give them a glowing appearance on stage.
Read more about this topic: Child Beauty Pageant
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I consider criticism merely a preliminary excitement, a statement of things a writer has to clear up in his own head sometime or other, probably antecedent to writing; of no value unless it come to fruit in the created work later.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)
“Of all the cants which are canted in this canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting!”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)