Ayanna Nahmias, Editor-in-ChiefLast Modified: 00.09 AM EDT, 6 May 2010

“I’m going to smile and make you think I’m happy, I’m going to laugh, so you don’t see me cry, and even if it kills me - I’m going to smile."

UNITED STATES - Child beauty pageants are as revolting and damaging to female children as the other heinous practices which have been highlighted in this blog. From Leblouh to FGM, the pain inflicted upon daughters by mothers who willingly participate in their physical and psychological abuse will haunt them for the remainder of their lives. These mothers are not bad people, they just want the best for their daughters when they try to physically mold and conform them to dangerous and idealized standards of beauty.

Ultimately, the problem with child beauty pageants is the sexualization of girls as young as 2 and 3 years old. There is no justification for this aspect of the industry. A child's confidence lies not in how closely she can approximate a grown woman through the artifice of make-up, but in how we as parents help her to develop her innate gifts and abilities so that her external beauty compliments her personality and talent instead of dominating her existence.

What a woman chooses to do with her body is her right, but a child is innocent and lacks the autonomy to exercise free will. To dress a girl up and make her parade around a stage like a prostitute is unconscionable. To quote James Whitcomb Riley, “When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

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