Saturday, January 5, 2008

Child Beauty Pageant Edition



So . . . this evening is the Miss Texarkana Texas Teen, Miss Texarkana Arkansas Teen, and Miss Texarkana (state unknown) Pageant.

But this morning, only blocks from my home, in the Historic Perot Theater,was the Little Miss Texarkana Pageant. I had to go. And then, I had to report back to you. Here is what I saw (though my eyes are still burning):

Baby Misses are 1-2 years old and wear more makeup than I.



Tiny Misses are 3-4 years old and wear more makeup than I.




Little Misses are 5-6 years old and wear more makeup than I. The Talent competition begins with this group, but only for the contestants that paid the extra entry fee to participate. One did. And, guess what? She won the talent competition!



Petite Misses are 7-8 years old and wear more makeup than I. Three of these girls participated in talent. One of the talents was to sing a gospel song. She lost. The other two shook their (non-existing) breasts and did some bump and grind to appreciative whistles from the crowd. The slightly more icky one won. I couldn't even look through the lens anymore to take photos at this point.

Young Misses are 9-10 years old and Junior Misses are 11-12 years old. Both groups wear more makeup than I, and either suffer from severe estrogen overexposure or wear falsies under their gown bodices. The talent of choice for these age groups is interpretive dance (now named "lyric dance"), which seems to be dance for cheerleaders in training, usually to a contemporary christian soft-rock song, and with a plastered smile on the face throughout. These girls love the Lord, and express it though the splits.

I think my friend and I were the only audience members who were not family members of a contestant.

Love from the trenches,
Jess

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

So, so troubling.

Jess said...

interesting. and the scary thing is that this child beauty pageant post gets more google hits than the rest of my blog combined.

Gioia said...

So sad.

(and the word verification is : alots).