Calling on Federal Minister Peter Garrett and Victoria counterpart Wendy Lovell to intervene

Collective Shout has initiated a petition in response to the news that a US pageant company plans to import its child beauty competitions to Australia. You can find the petition on the Care2 petition site . Please sign and circulate it through all your networks. The petition reads: 

Child beauty pageant company Universal Royalty Beauty Pageant is planning to hold a ‘Child Beauty Pageant’ in Melbourne, Australia, in July.

Many psychologists and child development authorities agree that child beauty pageants are not in the best interest of healthy child development.

A study conducted by Anna Wonderlich et.al (2005) in the Journal of Treatment and Prevention reported ‘A significant association between childhood beauty pageant participation and increased body dissatisfaction, difficulty trusting interpersonal relationships, and greater impulsive behaviors and indicates a trend toward increased feelings of ineffectiveness.’

Kids free to be Kids, the Australian Childhood Foundation and Psychologist Dr Michael Carr Gregg have previously called for children under 14 to be banned from these contests.

Television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras reveal the child exploitation endemic in these pageants. Child advocates around the world have spoken out about the sexualised clothing, suggestive dance moves, hours of grooming and preening required. They have expressed concern about the way pageants provide external validation to girls that their physical appearance is what is most important in being female. They have criticised the way child beauty pageants re-inforce stereotypical norms about female beauty. They have also pointed out that adultifying children in pageants and elsewhere invites us to see them as older than they are, which puts them (and other children) at risk of inappropriate treatment.

Pitting young girls against each other in a competition based on physical appearance and performance is harmful to their wellbeing.Research on the sexualisation of children shows that reinforcing an emphasis on looks and attractiveness leads to negative body image, disordered eating, depression, anxiety and low self-esteem.

We call on the Federal Minister for Early Childhood and Youth, the Hon. Peter Garrett and the Victoria Minister for Children and Early Childhood Development, Wendy Lovell, to take action to prevent these style of pageants in Australia and (with State colleagues) to consider legislative measures to ban all future pageants for children.

Mtr on sexualisation of girls and pageants this week on SBS

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Men are stereotyped too

Came across this father’s day ad in The Weekend Australia magazine.

Right here we have a snapshot of the stereotypes that limit men and contribute to socialising them into standard – and often harmful – ways of behaving.

The ad spruiks six SBS DVDs for dad. The first is ‘The Killing’, the second ‘Erotic tales’ and the next four  are soccer matches.

Death, sex and sport. What more does a man need? The heading says ‘DAD. DVD. DONE’. I wonder who is purchasing ‘Erotic Tales’ for their father? “I’ll have an Erotic Tales for my dad thanks. Oh hang on make that two, I’ll get one for grand-dad as well”.

Is this how men want to be seen? The men I know and mix with don’t.

This socialisation into sex and violence starts early. I recently interviewed Maggie Hamilton about her new book What’s Happening to Our Boys?  She argues that we are knocking the tenderness out of boys at the youngest of ages. If you read my post on computer games for boys, you will have to agree.

In the same way women are resisting negative and harmful stereotypes about them, men need to as well. Including on father’s day.