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Essay / Beauty and Beauty Pageants - 753
When you enter a beauty pageant, there is a talent section and swimsuit/sportswear categories. By having these parts of the pageant, we teach our girls to use their bodies to feel beautiful. The majority of girls who participate in the talent portion of the competition will be dancing for their talent. They are taught to use their pretty smiles and sometimes sexual moves to impress the judges and get a crown as a representation of their beauty. Over the years, controversy surrounding the swimsuit portion of the pageant has had such an impact that pageant competitions for teens now feature sportswear instead of swimsuits, as a way to promote a healthy lifestyle that all girls should adopt. Even with the shift to sportswear, girls continue to be taught to idolize their bodies, "many young women with eating disorders have been trained from a young age to value physical perfection, thinness, athletic prowess and attractiveness.” (Cartwright, Child Beauty Pageants: What Are We Teaching Our Girls?) Another issue Cartwright raises about what we teach our girls is that we teach young girls to strive for the wrong kind of attention. These young girls are learning that the best form of attention comes from how you look. That the outward appearance is what matters, rather than what's inside. Pageants also teach girls the wrong form of competitiveness, pageants teach them to compare themselves to the girl standing next to them and try to be more beautiful than they are. On the contrary, some pageant parents will say that “participating in beauty pageants is no different from playing a sport, which also requires time and money and puts intense pressure on young competitors…. like young athletes, little beauty queens learn discipline and feel great pride in it.