2011/13: Should children be involved in beauty pageants?


What they said...
'There really is no place in Victoria for these pageants ... they are not some innocent baby bonnet parade, they are something a bit more insidious'
Martin Pakula, the Victorian shadow attorney-general

'If you are looking at children in a sexual way, you should be ashamed of yourself and something is wrong with you'
Annette Hill, owner of the Texas parent company Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant

The issue at a glance
On July 30, 2011, protesters gathered in Melbourne to rally against a child beauty pageant being held at Northcote, in which children as young as two months old were to be competitors.
They called for new laws to ban young children entering beauty pageants, and a code of conduct for the children's performances.
The competition, the first of its kind in Australia, was organised by the United States-based group Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant. Texas-based Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant is heavily featured in Toddlers & Tiaras, an American reality TV show.
Event promotional material mentioned optional extras such as tanning, dressing like a celebrity for a $50 fee and the chance to pose for photographs with America's reigning child beauty pageant queen, six-year-old Eden Wood.
The anti-pageant protests were largely organised by a group titled Pull the Pin on Child Beauty Pageants. The group has a Facebook page. Supporters of the pageant established their own Facebook pThe Age:  Australians Who Love Beauty Pageants.
More than 100 contestants from around Australia registered for the pageant, which is open to all ages from babies to adults. The entry fee was $295.

Background
(The following information is an abbreviated version of the wikipedia entry titled 'Child beauty pageant'. The full text of this entry can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_beauty_pageant)

A child beauty pageant is a beauty contest featuring contestants including and younger than 18 years of age. Divisions include talent, interview, sportswear, casual wear, swim wear, western wear, theme wear, outfit of choice, decade wear, and evening wear, typically wearing makeup as well as elaborate hairstyles. The contestants wear custom fitted and designed outfits to present their routines on stage.

Beauty pageants began in the United States in 1921 when the owner of an Atlantic City hotel struck upon the idea to help boost tourism. However, the idea of child competitions had already circulated through 'Most Beautiful Child' contests held in major cities across the country. The Little Miss America pageant began in the 1960s at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. Originally, it was for teenagers from 13 to 17 years old, but by 1964 there were over 35,000 participants, which prompted an extension of age divisions. The modern child beauty pageant emerged in the late 1960s, held in Miami, Florida. Since then, the industry has grown to include nearly 25,000 pageants. It is an increasingly lucrative business, bringing in about a billion dollars a year.

The murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a child who had been a prominent competitor in child beauty pageants, in late 1996, turned a critical public spotlight onto these pageants. Critics began to question the ethics of parents who would present their child in such a way. In 2001, HBO aired its Emmy-winning documentary 'Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen', which attracted much attention.

Besides the laws that regulate child education, pageants are a relatively ungoverned area of child activity. Child contestants are not considered 'working', so pageants are exempt from American child labour laws. Pageants also have different rules, so it becomes hard to set a law that will cover every pageant. New York, Texas, Massachusetts, Arkansas, California, Vermont and Maine do not have any laws regulating pageants.

Besides travel and lodging expenses, pageants require an entry fee that usually ranges from fifty to several hundred dollars, depending on the type of competition being entered. Makeup and hair is typically done by a professional makeup artist. Spray tans and other accessories also must be paid for, as well as clothing and outfits. Dresses can cost anywhere from $200 to $6000, depending on the designer and the amount of adornment on the garment. Some parents hire pageant coaches to teach their child professionally choreographed routines. There have been cases of families going into debt or losing their homes because of overextending family resources to cover the costs that the pageants required.

Internet sources
The Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant home page can be found at http://www.universalroyalty.com/
The site includes photographs of current winners, a schedule of upcoming pageants, and promotions for modelling and make-up lessons and photograph retouching.

Collective Shout is a lobby group which targets corporations, advertisers, marketers and media which objectify women and sexualise girls to sell products and services.
They have supported Pull the Pin on Beauty Pageants (another protest and lobby group) in opposing the Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant staged recently in Melbourne.
Collective Shout's home page details the group's opposition to child beauty pageants and includes a lengthy comment from Collett Smart, a child and adolescent psychotherapist and a member of Collective Shout, who has publicly condemned these contests. You may need to scroll down the page to find Smart's comments.
Collective Shout's home page can be found at http://collectiveshout.org/

The online opinion site, Squidoo, includes a set or arguments for and against child beauty pageants. These arguments can be found at http://www.squidoo.com/child-beauty-pageants-pros-and-cons

On September 13, 1998, The New York Times published an analysis of child beauty pageants titled, 'Tough Times on the Children's Pageant Circuit'. The analysis looks at the shift in popular opinion against child beauty pageants in part prompted by the murder in 1996 of child beauty pageant competitor JonBenet Ramsay.
The full text of this analysis can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/1998/09/13/style/tough-times-on-the-children-s-pageant-circuit.html

On February 20, 2007, The Washington Post released a detailed report on the findings of the American Psychological Association's Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls. Among the report's findings was the potential adverse effect of participation in child beauty pageants. The full text of The Washington Post article titled, 'Goodbye to Girlhood' can be found at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602263.html

On January 27, 2009, the online parenting advice site, Today Parenting, included an article titled, 'Parents defend putting their kids in beauty pageants'. Though the article adopts a neutral stance, it presents in detail the views of parents who believe that beauty pageant participation has benefited their children.
The full text can be found at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28873086/ns/today-parenting/t/parents-defend-putting-their-kids-beauty-pageants/

On May 24, the ABC released a news report on the spread of anti child beauty pageant protests to Perth, spearheaded by the lobby group, Pull the Pin on Child Beauty Pageants. The full text of the report can be found at http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2011/05/24/3225857.htm

On May 25, 2011, The Sydney Morning Herald published a news report detailing the growing opposition to the staging of a Universal Royalty Beauty pageant in Melbourne. The report is titled, 'Parents protest over "toxic" pageants'. The full text of the report can be found at http://www.smh.com.au/victoria/parents-protest-over-toxic-pageants-20110524-1f2jh.html

On July 29, 2011, Nine MSN carried a report titled, 'US beauty pageant hits Melbourne'. The report includes details of the Victorian government having asked the child safety commissioner to attend the Melbourne pageant. It also includes a series of photographs of child pageant star, Eden Woods, and a link to a Channel Nine news video report on both the pageants and Eden Woods.
This information can be found at http://news.ninemsn.com.au/glanceview/180443/us-child-pageant-hits-melbourne.glance

On August 4, 2011, the ABC's opinion site, The Drum, published a comment by Brendan O'Neill titled, 'Well done, pageant-haters'. O'Neill argues that opposition to child beauty pageants exaggerates the harm they can do, ignores the general sexualisation of women and children in our society and is motivated by class prejudice against those who typically enrol their children in pageants.
O'Neill's opinion can be found in full at http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2824460.html

Arguments against child beauty pageants
1. Beauty pageants sexualise children
It has been claimed that the manner in which many child beauty pageant participants dress and behave sees they mimicking the behaviour of adult contestants. This is claimed to be undesirable because it imposes a premature sexuality on children and robs them of interests and activities that are better suited to their stage of development.
Dr Phillip Brock, the chairman of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists' Faculty of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has expressed concern that the pageant objectifies and judges children 'against sexualised ideals'.
Dr Brock has stated, 'Sexualisation is a process whereby a child's value is based on their appearance or behaviour to the exclusion of other characteristics, and attractiveness as a child is equated with being sexy.
[We] would like to emphasise the potential developmental harm that can be associated with the sexualisation of children and tweens.'
'Pull the Pin' is a protest group opposed to child beauty pageants. Like many critics of these pageants, its members object to them on the basis that 'little girls parade wearing make-up and sexy clothes'.
Glenn Cupit, a senior lecturer in child development at the University of South Australia, has stated, 'The title is "child beauty pageant" but if you look at the way the children are dressed and required to act, it's actually a child sexualisation pageant.
The children are put into skimpy clothes, they are taught to do bumps and grinds. It's not looking at children's beauty. It's a particular idea of what beauty is, which is based on a highly sexualised understanding of female beauty.'
Martin Pakula, the Victorian shadow attorney-general, has stated, 'There really is no place in Victoria for these pageants ... they are not some innocent baby bonnet parade, they are something a bit more insidious.'
Neil Hastings, the Liberal member for Hastings, has stated, 'It is common sense and most of the community agree with it, that children deserve to be children and it's our job to make sure that they are allowed to do that.'

2. Beauty pageants an damage a child's self-esteem
It has been claimed that participating in beauty pageants is harmful for the self-esteem of young people. At a formative stage in their development they are encouraged to see their self-worth largely in terms of their physical attributes and to strive for standards of appearance that are inappropriate to their age. This, it is argued, is likely to cause problems for them in later life.
Martina M. Cartwright, an adjunct professor of Nutritional Sciences at the University of Arizona, has stated, 'Many experts agree that participation in activities that focus on physical appearance at an early age can influence teen and/or adult self-esteem, body image and self-worth. Issues with self-identity after a child "retires" from the pageant scene in her teens are not uncommon. Struggles with perfection, dieting, eating disorders and body image can take their toll in adulthood...
Intense participation in activities that spotlight physical appearance ... [make] self-worth and self-esteem inextricably tied to attractiveness.'
FRM Model Management director, Mr Stephen Bucknall, has stated, 'It is hard enough for those in their teens to deal with the ongoing hardships of self imThe Age:  but to put this on to those barely past infancy is disgusting.'
It has further been noted that competing in child beauty pageants is likely to be harmful to a young girl's self-esteem as the likelihood of her not winning a place in such competitions is far greater than her likelihood of success. Therefore many girls are being shown that their worth centres on their appearance and, as evidenced by their failure to win, that they are not pretty enough.
Adolescent and child psychotherapist, Collett Smart, has stated, 'It's cruel to judge little girls on their appearance. To say to a young girl, no, you're not pretty enough. So we're setting them up for plastic surgery and Botox injections and as a society, we must not sit by and let that happen.'
Anti-pageant protester, Catherine Manning, of Pull the Pin on Beauty Pageants for Children, has stated, 'We are very concerned that over in Northcote today, there are little girls who have been primped and preened, and waxed and spray-tanned to look like Vegas showgirls being paraded in front of a panel of judges, to potentially be told they're not good enough, they're not hot enough, they're not pretty enough.... I believe that will have an impact.'
Professor Cartwright has further stated, 'Adults need to be aware of the potential long-term impact super-competitive, beauty-driven pursuits can have on a young girl's psyche.'
Psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, who specialises in adolescent mental health, has stated, 'In my view if you were to say to me that you put your child in that situation I would absolutely suggest to you that it's bordering on child abuse.
These children will not come out of this unscarred psychologically and we're all sitting around rather like voyeurs watching it happen. There's something really quite obscene about that.'

3. Beauty pageants encourage subsequent eating and other disorders
It has been claimed that the unnatural focus on appearance may help to encourage eating and other disorders in children.
Stacey Weiner in an article published in The Washington Post in 2007 noted that the children in beauty pageants had been linked to three of the most common mental health problems of girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression.
In a 2002 study of seventh-grade girls who viewed idealized magazine images of women reported a drop in body satisfaction and a rise in depression.
A Sydney doctor and child health advocate, Ramesh Manocha, has warned that the competitive element can have long-term negative consequences such as eating disorders.
William Pinsof, a clinical psychologist and president of the Family Institute at Northwestern University has stated, 'Being a little Barbie doll says your body has to be a certain way and your hair has to be a certain way. In girls particularly, this can unleash a whole complex of destructive self-experiences that can lead to eating disorders and all kinds of distortions in terms of body image.'
In a 2005 study by Anna Wonderlich, of the University of Minnesota, eleven women who took part in child beauty pageants were compared to eleven women who had not. The study found pageant contestants scored higher on body dissatisfaction, interpersonal distrust and greater impulsiveness.
Adolescent psychologist, Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, has stated, 'All of the evidence says that this sort of early sexualisation of young people is associated with negative body imThe Age:  disordered eating, depression, anxiety, low self esteem. It's simply toxic to the young people of Australia.'

4. Participants are too young to give informed consent
It has been claimed that the participants in child beauty contests are too young to give informed consent. According to this line of argument, even if a child appears to enjoy the pageants and claims to want to participate, the little girl is judged to be too young to know what is in her long-term best interests and whether the pageants are potentially causing her harm.
A Minor Consideration is a non-profit foundation formed to give guidance and support to young performers. One of its members, Karen Nussbaum, has stated, 'Most stage mothers claim that their child wanted to enter the pageant on her own. Does an eight-year-old girl know what is best for her? In 1996 seven-year-old Jessica Duboff died when her parents allowed her to fly a plane across the country because she liked it. Should parents rely on their children to know what is best for them?'
Education consultant and parenting expert, Kathy Walker, has stated, 'These young children are not able to make informed decisions to enter this competition - it is their parents. It is disempowering and gives [kids] a message that life is about competing against each other instead of developing their own sense of self and learning to like who they are - not what they look like.'
Catherine Manning, from protest group Pull the Pin on Beauty Pageants for Children, has stated, 'We'd like to see an age restriction, probably 16 years of age and then a code of conduct around not just beauty pageants but children's performance, activities where they're quite often encouraged to engage in adult beauty procedures like waxing and spray tanning just to perform.' Such age restrictions would give young people an opportunity to exercise informed consent.

5. Child beauty pageants pander to parental ambitions
It has been claimed that many child beauty pageants exist to service the needs of parents rather than the best interests of their children.
Child psychologist, Dr. Robert Reiner, stated in 2006 that many parents whose children took part in pageants were attempting to live vicariously through their young daughters and were often 'very pushy parents who, for a variety of reasons, didn't get what they wanted when they were children.'
Australian dance centre director, Barbara Komazec, has stated, 'There are those parents out there who wanted their kids to do it because the parents had wanted to do it.'
Australian parenting expert, Maggie Dent, has similarly explained, 'As far as stage parents go, the difference between encouraging your child and pushing them is really important. When you get those parents who are really pushy and demanding and interfering, that's when you've got a stage parent, which actually a lot of the time is really detrimental to the child's progress ... the pushiness and the interference is getting confused with encouraging them and supporting them in what they want to do.'

Arguments in favour of child beauty pageants
1. Most pageants do not sexualise children
Supporters of child beauty pageants argue that they are not an attempt to sexualise children. They claim that all the pageants involve is giving children an opportunity to dress up and have fun. Many pageants are careful about the sort of adornments that they will allow children to wear. For example, Beatriz Gill, a United States child pageant director and a former child participant, does not allow make-up or snug costumes in her pageants.
Jodie Fraser, whose 14-year-old daughter Rebecca travelled from Cootamundra in New South Wales for the Melbourne pageant, has stated, 'I don't know why people are so against it. There's so many things that people put their kids in.
My daughter has been dancing since she was four, wearing makeup and costumes and no one complained about that.
(Pageants are) about stage presence, it's about your overall confidence and feel, it doesn't have to be anything about how you look.'
It has further been claimed that to see child beauty pageants as sexualisation indicates that there is a problem with the observer.
Annette Hill, owner of the Texas parent company Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant, has stated, 'If you are looking at children in a sexual way, you should be ashamed of yourself and something is wrong with you. It's all about a beautiful dress, a beautiful child with lots of personality performing on stage.'
Brendan O'Neill in an opinion piece published by the ABC on August 4, 2011, stated, 'Indeed, the great irony of the anti-pageant fury is that it is not the princess-obsessed mums who are sexualising these pink and fluffy girls, but the protesters. ]
Where most normal people who look at a girl in a pink dress and over-the-top make-up simply see a child who likes dressing up ... the pageant-bashers see SEX, a little whore, a walking, talking temptation for the predatory paedophiles who apparently lurk in every street and alleyway in Australia.'

2. Beauty pageants develop children's confidence
Many parents are of the opinion that beauty pageants have several benefits such as an increase in confidence, a tendency toward being extroverted, and the opportunity to be better public speakers.
Mrs Phyllis Jones, whose daughter is a regular child beauty pageant competitor in the United States, has stated, 'I was trying to give Meaghan some exposure as far as public speaking. When she was young, she was really, really shy. I wanted her to develop her own type of personality.'
Mrs Jones added that her daughter participates in a wide array of activities, from cheerleading to gymnastics to dance. Mrs Jones stated, 'I just want to give Meaghan a choice of things she could do in life.'
Another mother commented on the effect that competing in a child beauty pageant had on her daughter, 'She learns skills such as going out in a crowd, not to be shy, and to be herself while people are watching and focusing on her.'
Parents also claim that contests help teach their children to deal with competition.
In an article published in the Harvard University Gazetteer on June 8, 2010, William J. Cromie wrote, 'Parents with higher incomes and education beyond high school often cite teaching a child how to deal with competition as a main reason for entering pageants. Many of them want their daughters to be doctors, dentists, or to have professional careers.'
The promoters of Australia's first Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant defended the practice saying that it taught the lesson of 'striving to be your very best'.

3. Child beauty pageants provide fun and camaraderie for participants
It has been claimed that child beauty pageants provide participants with an entertaining and challenging experience which is also an opportunity to form friendships with other children.
Contestant Allie Richardson, aged seven, made the following comment about her involvement in beauty pageants. 'I like doing the pageants because they're fun and I like making new friends. Sometimes I get to be in other pageants with my friends. And when my friends win, then I'm really happy for them.'
On the opinion site Squidoo, it has been claimed, 'The majority of child pageants and pageant parents work toward creating a sense of camaraderie among the contestants. The kids play together backstThe Age:  and the parents often help each other. Some contestants have made lifelong friends at pageants. When parents have the right attitude, the children will, too.'
Squidoo has also included the following supportive observation about child beauty pageants, 'Pageants can be a lot of fun for kids. Most pageants sell foods that kids love, including pizza, hot dogs, popcorn, candy, and other snacks. Some of the larger pageants also provide backstage activities for the kids, and a few even have costumed characters interact with the younger girls.'

4. Parents can be trusted to look after their children's wellbeing
Supporters of child beauty pageants argue that government intrusion is not needed and that parents can be relied upon to act in the best interests of their children.
Though the children are too young to give informed consent to their participation in beauty contests, the same argument could be made in relation to the sports they play, the music lessons they receive and the medical treatments they receive. In such circumctances the state typically relies on parents to make appropriate decisions for their children.
New South Wales Minister for Community Services, Pru Goward, has stated that state intervention in parenting is appropriate only in cases of abuse and neglect.
Ms Goward argues, 'I do not believe the state has any business interfering in a voluntary activity such as this unless there were clear evidence that children involved were at risk of significant harm through neglect or abuse.
We all make choices as parents and in a free society we need to accept that the state cannot regulate to micromanage parental choices...
Parents well know that any contest - sporting, academic, or artistic - puts their child under pressure, and on each occasion the parent makes a judgment about whether the pressure and also the resultant self-consciousness are worth the price of success or failure.'
The Victorian Minister for Children and Early Childhood Development, Wendy Lovell, has stated, 'We should trust parents to make the right decision for their children.'
It has further been noted that the majority of children will not continue to take part in an activity that they do not enjoy. Thus, a combination of parental concern and the natural preferences of children are believed to be sufficient to ensure that they will not be coerced into activities that are either harmful to them or against their inclinations.
Mickie Wood, the mother of American child beauty pageant star, Eden Wood, has stated, 'These are people that don't know my child. If Eden doesn't want to do something, she will let you know it.'

5. Opponents of child beauty pageants are often reacting to extreme examples
It has been claimed that many of those who oppose child beauty pageants are basing their views on extreme examples. These pageants have been popularised in Australia by shows such as the United States reality series Toddlers & Tiaras which airs locally on pay TV.
Kristine Kyle, a Melbourne mother of four, is organising the current Australian child beauty pageant as a volunteer. Ms Kyle believes that much of the criticism levelled at child beauty pageants is ill-informed and based on programs such as Toddlers & Tiaras.
Ms Kyle has stated, 'We are asking people to educate themselves. Toddlers & Tiaras is a reality TV show. They have to make it dramatic so people will watch it. Our pageant is not going to be like that.' She argues that programs such as Toddlers & Tiaras exaggerate the clichs associated with beauty pageants - pushy parents, unctuous judges and young girls in exaggerated make-up and push-up bras. The majority of contests, she claims, are not like this.
Ms Kyle has further stated, 'The pageant in Melbourne will not be like that. It will have a distinctive Aussie flavour. I think if some of the people who are anti-pageants could see one before passing judgement, they would be surprised what a positive experience they actually are.'
Sally Belinda Broad, the director of Australian Kids Pageants, has claimed, 'Fake tan, prostheses, fake eyelashes, extreme makeup, false nails, that kind of thing is typically practised only by a minority in the US. Our events are "natural" Pageants where anything fake is disallowed and age appropriate appearance and performance is encouraged.'
It has further been suggested that there is an element of class prejudice in criticisms of child beauty pageants, with opponents condemning these events as one of the low-brow occupations of the ignorant and the ill-educated.
Brendan O'Neill in an opinion piece published by the ABC on August 4, 2011, stated, 'A lot of this is driven by naked, old-fashioned, bogan-bashing snobbery, a deep disdain for those suburban folk who have such inferior pastimes to the more decent sections of society.'

Further implications
Opponents of child beauty pageants in Australia have called for these competitions either to be banned or regulated. The type of regulations envisaged would place an age limit on competitors (the most common suggestion being for a lower age limit of 16) and have restrictions put on the type of make-up that could be used and the type of performances competitors could give. The intention would be to make it harder for competitors to have overtly sexual routines.

A ban would be very difficult to justify. As supporters of child beauty pageants note, these pageants are not the only form of competition in which children are involved. Nor are they the only form of competition that stretches the boundaries of what might be considered age-appropriate behaviour. Children regularly participate in competitions involving ballet or other forms of dancing. They take part in musical talent searches. They audition for roles in films, television programs or commercials. They take part in eisteddfods. They compete in sporting competitions. They audition to be child models. If a ban were imposed on child beauty pageants then many of these other activities would also have to come under scrutiny. It would be very difficult to justify banning child beauty pageants while allowing other comparable child-based competitions to continue. The likely end result is that no bans would be imposed.

It may be easier to set a limit on the age at which children can compete in beauty pageants, but, even here, it is likely that opponents of beauty pageants will not be satisfied with what it is possible to impose. The suggested lower limit of 16 seems unrealistic. Again, while those under 16 take part in a variety of other competitions, it would be very difficult to bring in a law which specifically required participants in beauty pageants to be far older than children allowed to perform on stage or in commercials.

In the final analysis, the law is likely to continue to respect the judgement of parents. Barring a legal prohibition, the best method of reducing participation in the more extreme forms of child beauty pageant would seem to be to educate parents about the dangers they can represent. This is likely to ensure that parents do not involve their children in competitions which would unduly sexualise them or feed latent insecurities. Contest organisers will only run competitions for which they can find a suitable number of competitors. Therefore, parents have a great deal of power to influence the types of competition in which their children become involved. It is important they make informed and appropriate choices.

Newspaper items containing information on this issue outline
The Age:  May 19, 2011, page 15, comment by Michelle Smith, `Child beauty pageants are hideously ugly'.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/child-beauty-pageants-are-hideously-ugly-20110518-1et2k.html

Herald Sun:  May 18, 2011, page 9, news item (photo) by Elissa Doherty, `Critics sink claws into kids' pageant'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/claws-sharpened-over-child-beauty-pageants/story-fn6bfm6w-1226057847705

The Age:  May 25, 2011, page 6, news item (photo of children at protest rally) by Carolyn Webb, `Parents protest over "toxic" pageants'.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/parents-protest-over-toxic-pageants-20110524-1f2jh.html

Herald Sun:  May 24, 2011, page 2, news item by Elissa Doherty, `"Natural beauty" pageant for kids'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/natural-beauty-pageant-for-kids/story-fn7x8me2-1226061461750

The Australian: June 18, 2011, Australian Magazine insert, page 8, news item (photo of contestants), `Primp or pimp?'.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/primp-or-pimp/story-e6frg8h6-1226080050443

Herald Sun:  June 17, 2011,  news item (photo), `Beauty pageant not so welcome down under'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/beauty-pageant-not-so-welcome-down-under/story-fn7x8me2-1226077299878

Herald Sun:  July 28, 2011, page 13, news item by Elissa Doherty, `Mayor hopping mad at pageant'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/local-mayor-hopping-mad-at-childrens-pageant/story-e6frf7jo-1226102998725

Herald Sun:  July 27, 2011, page 9, news item (photos) by Elissa Doherty, `Picture-perfect kids'.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/picture-perfect-kids-for-25/story-e6frea8c-1226102394761

Herald Sun:  July 26, 2011, page 27, comment (photo) by Daniel Andrews, `Keep glitz away from our children'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/keep-glitz-away-from-our-children/story-e6frfhqf-1226101643059

Herald Sun:  August 2, 2011, page 15, news item (photo) by Fenella Wagner, `Any prize will do in Eden fiasco'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/any-prize-will-do-in-eden-fiasco/story-fn6bfm6w-1226106211810

The Australian:  August 2, 2011, page 13, comment (photo) by Caroline Overington, `Ugly truth about beauty pageants'.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/ugly-truth-about-beauty-pageants/story-e6frg6z6-1226106209926

Herald Sun:  August 1, 2011, pages 6-7, photos, news items, including, `Eden centre of cheque-book TV'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/eden-wood-centre-of-cheque-book-tv/story-fn7x8me2-1226105598704

The Age:  July 31, 2011, page 1, news item (photos, incl of Eden Wood) by John Elder, `Toddlers, tears and TV tussles at US-style beauty pageant'.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/toddlers-tears-and-tv-tussles-at-usstyle-beauty-pageant-20110730-1i5qh.html

Herald Sun:  July 30, 2011, page 5, news item (photos) by Elissa Doherty et al, `Princess pageant turns ugly'.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/ipad/princess-pageant-turns-ugly/story-fn6bfm6w-1226104637882

The Age:  July 30, 2011, page 3, news item (photo) by Quinn and Carey, `Beauty contest's ugly side decried'.
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/beauty-contests-ugly-side-decried-20110729-1i4el.html