priceless

Yes, I have spent a good amount of time casually observing how many in the general public seem to be convinced JonBenet Ramsey was murdered because she participated in child beauty pageants. There may be a connection revealed someday, but today there is not one shred of evidence to directly link pageants to the crime. Along with observations comes awareness of the general public's pageant repulsion. I don't get pageants myself, in the same way I don't get anything extreme. Like eyes on a future gold medal for figure skating or gymnastics when a child is 5 or 6. But I do get that many parents, not unlike the Ramseys, make these choices because they want the best for their offspring, described in a blog and article by sociology researcher Hilary Levey--




Sociology & Tiaras
Posted in the Everyday Sociology Blog
By Hilary Levey



"Every Wednesday night at 9 pm I sit down in front of the TV, put on TLC, pull out my notebook, and do research for two hours. Yes, that’s right—watching the pageant shows Toddlers & Tiaras and the new show, King of the Crown, is part of my research. Back in 1999, when I was a sophomore in college, I did a research paper on child beauty pageants for a required sociology class. Little did I know that a decade later I would still be writing about pageants, but now as a professional sociologist!

Ever since the murder of JonBenét Ramsey, Americans have been simultaneously fascinated and repulsed by child beauty pageants. Many people didn’t know about these events until the death of JonBenét, in late 1996, but I have found that child beauty pageants have existed in the United States in one form or another since the 1800s. The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the growth and development of a variety of events that are precursors to the child beauty pageants of today, including May Day festivals, baby parades, and beautiful and healthy baby contests.

All of these festivals, parades, and contests started at about the same historical moment. Such child-centered contests were part of a larger movement that began to socially value children in new ways. It was during this time period, from roughly the 1870s to the 1930s, that child labor was eradicated, compulsory education began, and children came to be valued as “economically ‘worthless’ but emotionally ‘priceless,’” according to sociologist Viviana A. Zelizer.. This re-evaluation of childhood helped contribute to the development of distinct children’s spheres, like clothing designed especially for children (see Daniel Thomas Cook’s work on kids’ clothes). [...read more]





Additional reading:
Ms. Levey's May 2009 article in Childhood

Pageant Princesses and Math Whizzes
Understanding children's activities as a form of children's work
Princeton University

Abstract

Organized children's activities qualify as children's work, in much the same way that school work does. Both produce transferable use value and create capital that contributes to the future production of goods and services. To illustrate this argument, this article draws on qualitative research primarily based on interviews with the parents of participants in two activities: child beauty pageants and academic enrichment classes. Despite considerable differences in the backgrounds of children who participate in these two types of activities, their parents converge in the reasons they give for enrolling their young children in these activities, and in their focus on their children's future careers and achievements.