Do Beauty Pageants Do More Harm Than Good?

YES THEY DO

The purpose of beauty pageants is to pick out the most beautiful women and everyone else is deemed the loser. The message of beauty pageants is if you are not the most beautiful person then you are worthless, are a loser.

SELF-ESTEEM

• Beauty Pageants destroy girl's self-esteem and contribute to the increasing rate of eating disorders and suicide among young women.
• Beauty Pageants have a powerful in defining what is attractive or Beautiful in our society. Most of the women and girls who watch or have seen beauty pageants are not able to live up to the standard of “BEAUTY' that is being shown to them.
• If these people fail to live up to that unrealistic standard of beauty then they often feel that they are ugly and worthless.
• When girls realise that they are not as beautiful as the people in the pageant, in the eyes of society. They become depressed and soon create a very low self image of them selves. This creates a whole world of trouble and girls become bulimic or anorexic or even attempt to kill themselves in their unneeded attempted to become what they think is beautiful.

WOMEN AS OBJECTS

• In a beauty pageant, all that women is parade themselves around, like objects, which leads to the encouragement of men to treat them as such.
• that beauty pageants contribute to a culture in which it is not only acceptable but desirable to treat women like objects
• If beauty pageants are good and desirable things, as the negating team says, then treating women like objects is a good and desirable thing because that is what every beauty pageant is.
• When men are encouraged to view women as objects this increases the instance of violence against women and rape.

Beauty Pageants do a lot of harm to children, emotionally and physically. In that show, Toddlers and Tiaras, you see those children crying and screaming. It's usually because the children are in pain or have rashes. Probably because of the enormous amounts of makeup they wear. Their moms are usually just living THEIR own selfish dream through their child, no matter who hurt or miserable they are

Beauty pagents are wrong because it puts this so called perfect visual in there head they think that all they have in life is being beautiful and skinny and flawless. Some of the mothers are just putting there kids in there because they wanted to be in a Beauty pagent and they live there lives through there child and its a disgrace!

Duh! All that beauty pageants do is degrade women down to nothing, and leave them with nothing left but murderous intentions and a extremely low self esteem. I believe that these pageants should be stopped because its like these people that participate in them know that they are destroying women around the world, and their beauty isn't natural any ways.

Yes! They do more harm then Good because if you have ever been in a pageant or have seen one then you may think of yourself as ugly or something else. In my opinion beauty pageants are a complete waste of time!!!!

I think that they do more harm than good. Because these little girls r strutting around in 1000 dollar dresses and when they grow up they r divas

Yes I agree because the lil kids only 5 or 6 get put on a ridiculous amount of make up and they look so sad before the beauty pageants and then they have to put on a forced smile on their poor faces upstage! All because their parents or whoever forces them to for money! Its ridiculous!!!

Of course pageants are bad in some cases, but it depends on the person and how they are prepared and supported... 

For example, Honey Boo Boo was on a pageant, and she didn't change at all when it was over.

I think a lot of the negatives noted on here have been about CHILD beauty pageants. This is a different issue to the senior contests, in which contestants make their own choice to enter and are usually of an age of 16+ and able to make adult decisions on how things will be run.

Not all contests are based on solely looks, this is more that case in bikini contests where they are usually looking for a swimwear model and as with all modelling they want a figure and face that will best demonstrate and sell their product.

Other contests have a wider judging criteria including elegance, confidence, character and interview and beauty only making up a small percentage of that. Fake beauty enhancements are not scored highly especially over natural beauty.

Many girls DO gain a lot of confidence from contests, as well as developing social skills and potential contacts if they are chosing a career in modelling, presenting or media etc. Others you will find come from a vast background of careers including soldiers, nurses and lawyers. Most have abolished the swimwear rounds also.

If a girl is guided correctly in a contest and goes in with her eyes open, she can expect a good experience.

I think it depends what age group you are talking about. When you're older you can think better than a toddler, it's your choice to go all bulimic or anorexic or look fake. But, when a little toddler is being forced to put on piles of make-up and hairspray, it's too much for them! Some people say it's good for speaking in front of large audiences or to build confidence, but it can also make a girl insecure about their face and body. I'm 50-50 on this.

In my opinion......YES! Have you ever seen the little kid pageants? They have 5 year old getting fake teeth even wearing major amounts of make up. They're only 5 way to young in my opinion.

No. I don't believe that. It is not all about the make-ups they had applied, it is all about the confidence being built  to them and being strong enough to face the criticisms of others. Who cares? Maybe those who say Beauty pageant is harmful are just envious because they don't have the same confidence as much as those who joined in the pageant.

They only harm people competing more than half of the people are watching or judging they aren't being harmed are they. They enjoy watching and that is good more good than harm is being done and the harm is only the stuff on the outside everything else is untouched

No I don't think they are. They teach you to be graceful and they empower women to think highly of themselves. They are also a great opportunity to meet new people, make new friends, and win scholarship money for college. Whoever thinks they are a waste of time must be jealous of how hard these girls work to achieve something that is important to them.