Last night I did something I rarely do…I watched mainstream television.
Constantly flipping through the channels as one invariably does when trying to find something barely watchable, I came across a programme that consisted of a fly on the wall series following child beauty pageants.
I’ve talked about the ponerisation of children in a previous narrative; and this program gut wrenchingly brought home to me that there is something terribly ominous afoot and for some peculiar reason society appears not to observe it.
There are a great number of people out there who feel that children’s beauty pageants are disturbing; but most critics focus on specific repercussions for the children taking part. Such as the pressure it puts children under, due to the competitiveness involved, or the danger of giving children a poor body image. Psychiatrists in particular have warned of the dangers of such children eventually developing eating disorders and self-esteem issues.
Before I continue; and in the interest of complete fairness; the programme I have alluded to here, features a vignette of the extreme end the child beauty pageant scene has to offer. Research has shown that not all child beauty pageants encourage the parents of small children to dress them up to look and behave like femme fatales.
Some pageants do not encourage the wearing of make up, or copies of revealing adult clothing and some even provide scholarships (in the US). Although to be truthful, I personally feel that all child beauty pageants, even the most innocuous and well meaning among them, are not without their shortcomings.
Many ordinary people who feel disturbed outside of professional academia; are very aware that the participants consist of very young girls and just feel concerned by what they perceive as the eerie effect of all the cosmetics and correctives used. Many feel piqued by the tendency of some mothers to purposely create an illusion of child-women far beyond their actual age; critics also worry that such imagery will be a focal point for paedophiles.
Although, these fears are valid and should be voiced, one has to query; how high is the risk of the public’s typically demonised and metaphorical perception of the paedophile infiltrating pageants? Would they, based on the psychological make up of a sizable proportion of paedophiles, actually not be attracted to pageant children? Could this particular risk be less widespread than one assumes?
The clinical definition of a paedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children and it is known that a substantial proportion of paedophiles have had sexual relations with adults in the past, which have not been satisfactory, or have resulted in humiliation. They have then turned to children as sexual partners, who seem more accessible and who give them back a sense of power and control.
Would in that case, children who bear no resemblance to pre-pubescent, children, after they have been applied with full makeup, highly teased hair and hair extensions, fake tans, false eyelashes, fake teeth to mask their baby teeth, fake nails to look like miniature versions of female adults; or heavily painted dolls actually hold any attraction for the paedophile we all fear so much?
The negatives are all possible, perhaps many even probable; but while these risks are concentrated upon there is something else going on, which to my mind is esoteric and much more portentous. Is our perception regarding the popular classification of a paedophile rather naïve? Are these classified paedophiles alone responsible for child abuse and child pornography?
When people think about paedophiles, they habitually conjure up a cloudy mental image of severely damaged individuals, who firstly feed from imagery of pre-pubescents downloaded from Internet child pornography sites, who often then go on to surreptitiously stalk; prey upon, abuse and subsequently murder children.
Our fears tend not to incorporate, or contemplate the creators and distributors of child pornography, only our narrow perception of the recipients and I personally find this just as dangerous.
In fact, one could quite easily acquiesce; that some types of child beauty pageantry are just a rose by any other name.
Is not anyone involved in any child beauty pageant that overtly sexualises toddlers and small children, akin to being the creators and distributors of both child abuse and child pornography? Apart of course from the actual children being exploited.
If one studies the COPINE project (Combating Paedophile Information Networks in Europe) child pornography typology by the University of Cork, in cooperation with the Paedophile Unit of the London Metropolitan Police; the Copine Scale’s ten level typology categorises child abuse/ child pornography images for use in both research and law enforcement. The UK Sentencing Advisory Panel recommend that Copine Scale levels four to six child abuse/ child pornography images be combined to administer level one conviction and sentencing.
The scale is as follows:
1 Indicative Non-erotic and non-sexualised pictures -showing children in their underwear, swimming costumes from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organisation of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness.
2 Nudist Pictures – of naked or semi-naked children in appropriate nudist settings, and from legitimate sources.
3 Erotica -Surreptitiously taken photographs of children in play areas or other safe environments showing either underwear or varying degrees of nakedness.
4 Posing – Deliberately posed pictures of children fully clothed, partially clothed or naked (where the amount, context and organisation suggests sexual interest).
5 Erotic Posing – Deliberately posed pictures of fully, partially clothed or naked children in sexualised or provocative poses.
6 Explicit Erotic Posing – Pictures emphasising genital areas, where the child is either naked, partially clothed or fully clothed.
7 Explicit Sexual Activity – Pictures that depict touching, mutual and self-masturbation, oral sex and intercourse by a child, not involving an adult.
8 Assault Pictures of children being subject to a sexual assault, involving digital touching, involving an adult.
9 Gross Assault Grossly obscene pictures of sexual assault, involving penetrative sex, masturbation or oral sex, involving an adult.
10 Sadistic/Bestiality
a. – Pictures showing a child being tied, bound, beaten, whipped or otherwise subject to something that implies pain.
b. Pictures where an animal is involved in some form of sexual behaviour with a child.
The mothers, who unconsciously enter their children in such pageants; and whose lives appear to be so meaningless, that for whatever reason, child beauty pageants become a synonym for the dolls house they once played with and the exploited children the grotesquely painted dolls. By the Copine typology it could be assumed that they are both child abusers and the creators of levels of child pornography.
It must be stressed of course that the exploitation of their own children does not for one moment imply a deliberate sexual connotation on their part, absolutely far from it, which makes the mothers victims in their own way also.
With this aside, it still does not detract from the fact that these mothers are, albeit inadvertently, grooming and instructing their own children to participate in activities which sexualise their children and that could very easily be construed as borderline child pornography according to UK law.
US law (United States v Knox) to a certain extent also appears to agree; during the Knox case it was stated that young girls aged between ten and seventeen “were dancing or gyrating in a fashion not natural for their age.” The girls wore bikini bathing suits, leotards, or underwear – none of the girls in the videos was nude. Knox was prosecuted and convicted under United States Child Pornography laws.
How is the suggestive dancing, hip wiggling, winking and provocative posing of small girls on a stage in front of an audience and judges, some of whom are men; really any different to the above case?
The only difference I can see is that videos were made and sold for profit; but if one considers that some child beauty pageants offer prizes of money; and in the case of the pageants featured in the programme I watched, the children involved were internationally televised, is this really so very different?
Due to modern culture, it seems we have reached a stage whereby dissimulation is commonplace. Behaviours that would have once been seen as iniquitous, have through gradual subliminal stimuli, via various media sources and some other industries been normalised.
One of the resulting consequences is that society has become dangerously desensitised to the sexualisation of children; for not only have we as a society incorporated beauty and sex, we have also encompassed small children in this coalescence.
The naïve justification of mothers for entering their children into this type of pageant is; that they are trying to build their child’s characters and self-esteem, for some this is no doubt true. Some also argue that the children want to and love taking part.
Sorry but in my opinion, not only are the children involved far too young to make such informed decisions, the agitation and tears by children, frequently witnessed before and during pageants (in the programme) suggests that the ‘wanting to take part’ dictum, was nothing more than a manipulation by the mothers involved and that genuine, willing participation and enjoyment by the child is rarely observed.
What is often observed as the child looking pleased with the event; is little more than juvenile adherence to pleasing the authority figures in their lives.
This is of course, a major plank in all levels and forms of child abuse. This is also why there is an ‘age of consent’; the concept being that a child below a certain age, cannot be legally seen as ‘giving consent’ as the authority of adulthood, over-rides all other decision making processes. As such, the young child can never be seen to be in approval of participation in pageants.
Some organisers, promoters, judges and aspects of mainstream media who supply televised imagery of such events often have I personally fear, a much darker side .
For when one dismantles the psychology that enables the public at large and it seems even the law, to characterise this type of child beauty pageant as relatively harmless, if rather bizarre; the pageant actually consists of parading small pre pubescent children in a sexualised and provocative manner for the edification of adults. What can one then deduce from this knowledge if one is honest?
Thinking about it leads one to open yet another rather horrifying can of worms.
For if one tries to rationalise the motivation of the judges, both male and female, who adjudicate the performances as totally innocent; one could reason that they genuinely believe that pageants are just an innocuously innocent version of the mainstream Miss World competition and that their own motives are therefore benign; and on the surface they may well be.
But when small children parade in two-piece swimwear one has to question this rationalisation. Subconsciously do the judges, in particular the females, most of whom must be fully aware that certain imagery such as the female body in a swimsuit, which details body parts more explicitly than full clothing, combined with a certain allure and provocative movement, instinctively understand it is a winning combination; and therefore encourage such actions?
I would personally say yes, when one considers that apart from the occasional exception to the rule, the children who are fake tanned, wearing full make up, false eyelashes, false teeth, miniature versions of revealing grown up clothing, who have been trained by mothers and pageant coaches to interact with judges by flirting, winking, walking provocatively, wiggling their hips and smiling in an alluring manner; always seem to win at these pageants.
The media one presumes, in making such programmes, want to point out the rather grotesque mindset that exists within some pageants. In that case an hour slot would be more than enough to demonstrate this. Why a serialisation, that continues to provide images of these children?
One has to ask, what is the motivating factor for this when they are surely, in doing so, no better than those they are exposing? One also has to ask, why do viewers continue to tune in week after week when the point has, for any thinking person, already been clearly made and presumably digested within a single episode?
We the public appear to view this particular conduct as bizarre normalcy, when the behaviours these children are being taught replicate tools of seduction.
I don’t understand why we have this stark duality in society, whereby parents are restricted from photographing their own children, on the grounds that they might be filthy paedophiles; Yet small children can be groomed to replicate vamps at pageants and corporates can provide images of Mily Cyrus’ nine year old sister, adopting deliberately constructed sexually enticing poses in erotic underwear. Both are paraded on mainstream media.
For whom?
I would say to those who insist that mainstream commercial child pornography does not exist, take a good look around you; the same can be applied right across the board. In children’s fashion, our pop cultures and the many magazines aimed at young girls.
In fact modern popular culture is saturated with child pornography and the scary thing is, we don’t seem to notice; instead we actively support, fund and encourage it.
