Comment & Debate
Cathy Enns. “Set Up to Fail: Child Beauty Pageants–An Editorial.” HERWriter. May 17th, 2011: “This is one place I fear we might be headed: plastic surgery on little ones to help them win pageants. Is it a far-fetched idea? Given the popularity of these events and the media attention they attract, and given that there are next to no controls on the industry (Nussbaum1), it’s only a matter of time.”
On a website offering advice for parents called Family Education, Carleton Kendrick, Ed.M., LCSW, expressed grave concern, explaining “the pain of kids (and their parents) struggling with eating disorders” and hearing “teens beg me to convince their parents to let them get plastic surgery,” Kendrick said the pageants “do a great disservice to the winners, the losers, and all children.”[1]