The ugly side of child beauty pageants

CHILD beauty pageants aren’t new — they started in the 1920s when an enterprising hotel owner in Atlantic City created a ‘Most Beautiful Child’ event to boost tourism.

What is new about the modern child beauty pageant is the transformation of a simple competition to find an appealingly plump and pretty toddler into a slick professional industry that transforms small girls into miniature beauty queens replete with garish make-up, big hair and sequined costumes that are more Bratz than traditional Sleeping Beauty princess.

The first Little Miss America was staged in the 1960s and has now evolved into the modern child beauty pageant industry with 250,000 pageants that generate $20 billion annually.