Last week I was watching a children's beauty pageant on T.V. The little girls seemed to be having a lot of fun dressing up and putting on makeup of course. From what I've seen most little girls enjoy "playing dress up". The thing is, it just doesn't seem write to have children being judged. The things we go through as children are a big factor in how we feel about ourselves and life as we get older. For the children that lost, it was horrible. I understand children have to learn you win some and you lose some but, but really shouldn't that just apply to sports. They can always try harder to win a sport or an academic spelling bee. When a child loses a beauty pageant, isn't that telling her she's just not pretty enough. She can't change her looks, she can't improve them, so she grows up thinking she'll just never be pretty enough. When she gets into her preteens that could really be devastating. I was a preteen just 15 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. From 13-17 years old were the hardest years of my life. I still believe that today, even with bills and work and life smacking me in the face everyday. That was the time in my life when I cared the most about what people thought of me. And the fact that these girls already have it imprinted in their brain that they are "just not pretty enough" would only make it harder. I've heard that beauty is just not skin deep and I that but you can't really tell teenagers that. When they spend half of their waking hours in school, in a surrounding where "beauty" is more popular and "beauty" gets the cute boyfriends and "beauty's" life just seems so much better. Most of the singer, actresses, and teen idols that we see on T.V. are beautiful. So in the end it ends up being an issue beyond appearences. It ends up being for of an issue that it seems you have to have be beautiful to get places in life. I pray that these children find all the more reason to push harder and do the best that they possibly can instead of set themselves up for failure because of a simple judgement that they faced when they were little that they couldn't do anything about.

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