A Blog of Musings and Mockery

Let’s Just Call it Progress
31 October 2008 by Ben.

An era when Halloween costume shopping for girls could be confused with exploring a Victoria’s Secret lingerie trunk may be fading. Girls between the ages of 6 and 14 and their parents seem to be gravitating away from revealing costumes this year.

I lived in Boulder in 1996 — the year that someone murdered six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey and the rest of us learned that even a child in kindergarten could win a beauty pageant. I was confused then in the same way I find myself confused now.
In the 20 January 1997 issue of People Magazine, Mr. Bill Hewitt wrote:

There was one video that showed JonBenét, who had won a half-dozen pageants, including a 1995 Little Miss Colorado title and a 1996 America’s Royale Miss title, dancing in flirtatious—even provocative—fashion. Photographs also surfaced of her in heavy makeup more suited to a woman at least three times her age.

Ten years and five months later, we apparently found ourselves reading about Miley Cyrus in Vanity Fair, and seeing her wrapped in a blanket on the second page of the article. Half naked? Not really. Partially nude? To no greater extent than a girl on a beach in a bathing suit.