Little Girl Blows Kisses from Billboard

I see it every day, twice a day. It’s a huge billboard advertising a dance studio. The sign sits alongside the road I travel to drive a family member home from their workplace.

When I look up at the sign, I can’t miss the gigantic photo of a little blonde girl, no more than six-years-old, her lips pursed in the kiss she is blowing off the palm of her hand. Her hair is up, her face made up like a little adult, and I am certain the intended goal is to evoke a response of “Oh, how cute!”

She is cute. Too cute. When I see her, I don’t think about the dance studio. I think about pageants. Little girls in beauty pageants. I think of pushy backstage moms, worn-out little girls, and children losing their childhood.

I think of JonBenét Ramsey*.

Before JonBenét, my only opinions about little children taking part in pageants were colored by movies depicting backstage mothers. I had seen Gypsy, the movie with Rosalind Russell playing the mother behind Natalie Wood’s Gypsy Rose Lee and Ann Jillian’s “Dainty” June when I was a kid. Even then I could see that no matter what Gypsy Rose or June really wanted for their lives, it was Mama Rose whose dreams were being played out.

After JonBenét’s death, during the hoopla around the still-unsolved case, I was shocked to realize how sexualized these little children were.

Are.

“Little Miss Walmart”

In the late 80s, I entered my daughter in a tiny pageant in a small-town Walmart. The prize was a $25 child-size rocking chair. She wanted that chair. I wanted her to have that chair. Twenty-five dollars was a lot for me at the time. So, I entered her in the contest.

At thirteen months old, my daughter spoke in complete sentences. She was, to say the least, precocious. Before the little pageant took place, she learned to curtsey in her little dress and say, “Good afternoon, I’m Little Miss Walmart.” I didn’t push her, but I did teach her.

She won. She had that little rocking chair for years. And she never entered another pageant again.

I was a dance mom for a while

She did take ballet and tap dancing for a little while when she was four. My late mother-in-law wanted it for her, so she paid for the lessons. They lasted less than a year. When I waited for her to finish her classes, other parents would come in and out.

It was evident to me that they came from a different background than I had. Their attention to their children was different from the way I attended to mine. It was fussier, pickier, judgier. Backstage at the one recital she did, I observed more than one overwrought “stage mother.”

When the same daughter was in junior high, she took drama in school. At some point during those years, she asked to attend outside workshops in acting. I signed her up and she attended, along with one or two of her cousins. They had a good time, I think, but it never went beyond that.

She seemed to have more fun playing viola in the orchestra and attending local plays as a writer for her high school paper. She took dance in high school, but never asked me if she could enter contests or pageants.

She never asked, and I never wanted her to do it.

Another of my daughters was involved in dance from elementary school through high school. She took after-school classes and elective dance classes in school. She never asked for more. What she really wanted to do was play soccer. I couldn’t afford that.

Instead, she joined the Army ROTC.

Things we don’t want to think about

When JonBenét Ramsey was killed, my daughters were four and eight. By then I was aware of the things that can happen to small children even when you least expect it. The terrible things we don’t want to think about.

JonBenét forced us to think about it.

We were forced, as a news-watching nation, to realize how pageants and dance can make innocent little girls look like grownup women in their tiny crop tops, glittery skirts, and made-up faces.

Yet it still goes on. Since JonBenét, we’ve had Toddlers & Tiaras. We’ve had Honeybooboo. Many of these little girls aren’t learning how to contend with the world as adults. They’re being taught to exploit their talents, their looks, and their skills to attract attention in the hope of being rich and famous. In the hope of winning.

Two sides to the pageant experience

In 2015, an article in The Week listed five reasons pageants are not good for kids. Among the five reasons were that pageants sexualize young girls, they cause cognitive and emotional problems, and the children are too young to say no. In the article, the writer quotes John Ramsey, JonBenét’s father, as saying that “It’s just a bad idea to put your child on public display.”

I read a few other articles that point out some of these same concerns about child beauty pageants. To offset this, though, I found a few stories about adult women who had been pageant kids.

In 2012, The Cut featured a story called I Was a Child Pageant Star: Six Adult Women Look Back. In it, the women talked about how much fun they had, how their self-esteem was built, and the platforms they had as teen pageant contestants. While they mention some negative aspects, most of the six featured in the story remembered positive experiences.

Back to the billboard

Obviously, dance classes aren’t pageants, but the kind of photo on the billboard I pass every day is the kind of photo you see advertising child pageants. I’m sure the little girl in the photo wants to dance, be cute, and have fun.

I suspect she’s as precocious and intelligent as my child was at the same age. Of course, I’m certain the parents who signed permission for their child to be used in the advertisement are proud of her. And, I’m sure she made money as a model. Hopefully, it went into an account or trust fund just for her.

It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, not at all. The problem is that whenever I see it, all I can think of are the bad things.

JonBenét.

Little children who learned far too early what it means to be hurt by adults in ways they don’t understand. The issue has fallen fairly close to home, sadly. We’ve learned that it isn’t always something that happens to someone else.

And so, it makes me uncomfortable.

*If you’re unfamiliar with the JonBenét Ramsey case or want a review, you can read about it here.

Final thought: when creating the digital art piece above, I discovered it was impossible to use the word “child” in the prompt, as it is a prohibited word. So, creating a cartoon kid blowing kisses is considered improper, but using a real, live child in a photo for advertising purposes is apparently perfectly acceptable.

Am I the only one who finds this incongruous?

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This story first appeared in Bouncin and Behavin Blogs on Medium