Toddlers, Tiaras, and Pedophilia: The Borderline Child Pornography Embraced by the American Public
![handle is hein.journals/tresl13 and id is 95 raw text is: Toddlers, Tiaras, and Pedophilia? The Borderline
Child Pornography Embraced by the American
Public
CHRISTINE TAMER
I. INTRODUCTION
Wearing tiny, tight hot shorts and a cut-off top bearing her midriff, Candi (short for
Candace) is coached to shake that bootie and work it. Everything naturally beautiful
about Candi is gone. She has fake hair, a fake tan, fake eyelashes, fake nails, and fake teeth.
Scantily clad and covered in makeup, she walks out on stage. They tell her she is doing this
for the money, so one day she can go to college and have a better life. Candi plasters on a
fake smile and waits for the curtains to rise. She has already done the sexy policewoman,
cowgirl, and nurse. This time the theme is schoolgirl. The music starts. Wink, booty
pop, raised leg, and a shimmy. The million-dollar question: is Candi a 25-year-old stripper
in Vegas or a six-year-old child in Nashville, Tennessee? Tuning in to hit television shows
like The Learning Channel's Toddlers & Tiaras or Women's Entertainment's Little Miss
Perfect provides the disturbing answer: Candi is a six-year-old beauty pageant princess.
Child beauty pageants started to become the target of increased controversy and
media scrutiny after the murder of beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.' As night after night
news networks aired videotapes of JonBenet Ramsey [p]laying the role of an alluring sex
kitten, CBS anchorman Dan Rather criticized the networks, claiming the tapes amounted to
nothing more than kiddy porn.2 Essentially, the JonBenet case [brought] to the surface
both our horror at how effectively a child can be constructed as a sexual being and our guilt
at the pleasure we take in such a sight.,3
In 2010, child beauty pageants that convert young girls into sex puppets adorned
with lipstick, mascara, false eyelashes, bleached hair, [and] high heels4 are hardly a thing
of the past. The $5 billion industry draws thousands of participants a year.5 The first part
of this Note will explore glitz child beauty pageants for children under age 13, similar to
those featured on TLC and WE TV, and describe the harms such pageants cause to
children.6 I will argue that these pageants lead to the sexualization of children, which is
1. See, e.g., Karen De Witt, Never Too Young to Be Perfect, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 12, 1997 available at
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/12/weekinreview/never-too-young-to-be-
perfect. html?scp=l &sq=never% 2Otoo%20young%20to%20be%20perfect&st=cse; Frank Rich, Let Me Entertain
You, N.Y. TIMES, Jan. 18, 1997, available at http://www.nytimes.com/1997/01/18/opinion/let-me-entertain-
you.html.
2. Henry A. Giroux, Nymphet Fantasies: Child Beauty Pageants and the Politics of Innocence, 57 Social
Text 31, 37-38 (1998) [hereinafter Giroux 1].
3. HENRY A. GIROUX, STEALING INNOCENCE: YOUTH, CORPORATE POWER, AND THE POLITICS OF
CULTURE 50 (2001).
4. Mark Davidson, Is the Media to blame for child sex victims?, USA TODAY, Sept. 1997, available at
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi m1272/isn2628_v126/ai_19782197/.
5. Henry A. Giroux, Child Beauty Pageants: A Scene From the Other America, TRUTHOUT, May 11,
2009, available at http://www.archive.truthout.org/051109A.
6. While there are many other types of pageants that children participate in, the focus of this paper will
be specifically on the glitz pageants, rather than natural pageants, for children under the age of 13. For a full](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/tresl13&div=7&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Toddlers, Tiaras, and Pedophilia: The Borderline Child Pornography Embraced by the American Public
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