History of Beauty Pageants

• Did you know that between 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 girls participated in over 100,000 beauty pageants in U.S.A last year?  What do beauty pageants consist of?  Beauty Pageants mainly focus on a female’s physical beauty, but also her personality, talent and how she best answers questions.  Judges tend to focus, on the dresses, hair and makeup. 
• Beauty Pageants began in the 1920’s, when women were solely valued on their appearances.  The first Miss America winner was a 16 year old school girl, who happened to look like a 1920’s movie star. During the early years, the swimsuit competition was the main events in pageants.  Women would parade in bathing suits and be judged on how good their bodies looked.
• During this 1920’s till quite recently, many people found this type of activity acceptable; however in today’s society the subjection of women is completely unacceptable.  In society today, to judge a women or girl completely on her looks and her stage persona is archaic and frowned upon.    
• What’s distressing is that the looks that are acceptable are not even realistic, these women and children are made to look like dolls, they advocate this fantasy image of what a beautiful woman and child should look like.
• Therefore by discussing child beauty pageants, adult beauty pageants and the effect they have on women and child, it will become apparent that beauty pageants are completely unethical and have no place in today’s society.  We will be using three different ethical theories, Kant’s Moral Law theory, Socrates and Plato’s healthy mind healthy soul, and John Mill’s utilitarianism theory.