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.

death by pageant

When JonBenet Ramsey was killed in 1996 the debate over child beauty pageants began. With release of reality show Toddlers and Tiara's the argument rages on today. For those that are bothered by child beauty pageants it is challenging not to see a derogatory opinion about this billion dollar national pass time, where maybe as many as 250K US citizens participate, without reading "remember what happened to JonBenet..."

Okay, that I remember what happened to JonBenet goes without saying. And after her murder I am told her pageant pictures and images were obtained by third parties, altered and distributed in a frenzy on the tube and tabloids. Souring ratings and viewer statistics told media producers to keep the pictures and stories coming; the public could not and apparently still can't get enough.

Yup, that I see what happened to JonBenet's parents goes without saying too. Tried by public opinion for the crime and a host of child abuse accusations grounded in association with child beauty pageants. Numerous folks that have never met the Ramsey's reach to claim JonBenet was forced to participate by a 'stage mother' type obsession. Others make even wilder assumptions and the phrase 'sexualizing' children became mainstream, citing child endangerment and going so far as to allege child pageants are lousy with pedophiles. Where do people get this stuff? One ridiculous allegation or any other, it is pretty clear making the Ramsey's responsible and blaming them for JonBenet's death is a whole lot easier than finding the killer. Easier and less expensive than putting pressure on Boulder authorities to do their job. And let's face it, without the Ramsey's for negative fodder many would have one less fantasy to help bolster their own family values and feel good about themselves as better than the Ramsey's. Striving to be one a step above the Ramsey's accused of abusing, torturing and killing their own child; now that's rich. Just how low on the 'bad parenting' scale would one be to prop themselves over those they consider murdering child molesters?

Beauty pageants. I don't care at all for or about them. Nonsensical conclusions aside I am very interested in exactly how child beauty pageants are abusive or if the public outrage is just a nasty secret revealed about our culture and more specifically, those that protest way too loud and too much. Much of this buzz seems to originate from that would consider themselves more a real American than I, those conservative religiously and politically. Huh?

I've heard that child beauty pageants may be attributed to individual eating disorders, contrasted by a national child obesity crisis. Education versus avocation values. Young women's self-esteem and the Barbie syndrome. For some kids pageant activities were too much pressure and summed up as reasons for parent-child relationship issues. I spent some time, again, looking for quantified or reputable studies about abuse and child beauty pageants. I am curious about the logic behind why child beauty pageants are so offensive that some are unable to seperate pageants from JonBenet's heinous murder. More critically it would be real good to know if there should be a call to action over an epidemic here is the US with hundreds of thousands of children being abused. There are some one off's but as of this writing there is nothing to suggest we have a child abuse crisis hiding in plain sight nor that JonBenet was abused or killed as a direct result of participating. Happy for someone to show me differently with facts and figures. In the meantime I am left with the idea beauty pageants may be just like the Ramsey's, a subject some people simply love to hate. Here is some of what I was able to find on the subject and took a look at this past week--

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

"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..."


The Dumbest Generation:
How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future
(Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)
by Mark Bauerlein and Jeremy P. Tarcher

"During the question and answer portion of the 2007 Miss Teen USA pageant, Lauren Caitlin Upton—then Miss South Carolina, now a college student and fashion model—was asked to comment on Americans’ geographic ignorance:

“Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?” Upton’s answer made her into a celebrity overnight. “I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, people out there in our nation don’t have maps,” Upton declared, “and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our…” Upton concluded in mid-sentence when her time ran out, substituting a forced grin for the object of her final prepositional phrase..."

The life course anticipated: gender and chronologisation among young people
Published in the Journal of Youth Studies
by Jenny Hockey

"Drawing on qualitative data from young men and their female partners in their twenties, this paper critically reviews debates about young people's perceptions of their futures. It argues that the anticipation of either a 'destructured' or a 'standardised' life course does not simply vary between different categories of young people; rather, it shows young people's experience of tension between these two trajectories. Moreover, in the case of estate agents and firefighters, interviewing both members of a couple revealed gendered differences in how future trajectories were being realised, women tending to direct and 'manage' young men's orientations towards 'adulthood', often by asserting chronologised milestones. In that our sample drew young men from three occupations with cultures seen as more or less stereotypically masculinised or feminised (firefighters, estate agents and hairdressers), our data also show class and occupational differences and, among estate agents and firefighters, their reflection in the gendered negotiations that contributed to couples' everyday heterosexual lives. At the intersection between gendered patterns of work, consumption, and fertility, then, young estate agents and firefighters and their female partners sought to plan shared lives that nonetheless cleaved to sometimes competing priorities..."

The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women
By Jessica Valenti

"The United States is obsessed with virginity — from the media to schools to government agencies. In The Purity Myth Jessica Valenti argues that the country’s intense focus on chastity is damaging to young women. Through in-depth cultural and social analysis, Valenti reveals that powerful messaging on both extremes — ranging from abstinence curriculum to “Girls Gone Wild” infomercials — place a young woman’s worth entirely on her sexuality. Morals are therefore linked purely to sexual behavior, rather than values like honesty, kindness, and altruism..."

Beyond Social Constructionism:
A Structural Analysis of the Cultural Significance of the Child Star
University of Wolverhampton, UK
by Jane O'Connor

"This article challenges the dominance of social constructionist theories of childhood by presenting a structural analysis of the child star as a recurrent, universal feature in the myths and legends of the world. The article argues that by conceptualising our understanding of children and childhood as being due solely to the socio-historical context in which they live, an important dimension of childhood may be overlooked. Through looking at media stories about child stars throughout the twentieth century, this article uses a psychoanalytic Jungian framework to explore deeper similarities and patterns in cultural story telling about children over different cras and social contexts..."