A Beauty Pageant Too Far

Time Magazine writer Joel Stein was on the radio talking about his experience at the Rapeublican National Convention. And got into trouble with this:

“The conservative protesters, all they do is read the bible…all they do is read scripture and have giant, giant pictures of dead fetuses,” Stein responded.

“I’ve seen so many bloody fetuses that I can literally tell good looking fetuses from ugly fetuses,” Stein added, much to the amusement of the hosts.

Stein then suggested that the dead fetuses should be entered into a beauty pageant.

“I wanted to walk around and pick a “Miss Fetus,” he remarked.

Predictably, LifeShite had a hissy fit: NOT funny.

So, some of us at DJ!, being Vicious Abortion Crusaders® and all, thought it would be fun to stage a Dead Fetus Beauty Pageant. But some of us here at DJ! have for-shit photoshop skills and so we appealed for help to Our Lovely and Talented Mad Skillz Crew.

Who said: Yuck. No way. You're on your own mucking about with dead fetus gore pr0n.

Some of us whined: How about watermelon fetuses. Not even a Watermelon Fetus Beauty Pageant?

*crickets*

As a consolation prize, we were offered this.

ST. LOUIS -- Now children don't have to wait until they are 3 or 4 years old to participate in a major beauty contest. Thanks to the first annual Little Miss Fetus U.S.A. Contest to be held next month in St. Louis, it will be possible for babies to win prizes and fame while still in the womb.

"If a baby hasn't participated in a beauty pageant by the third trimester, it's too late," said event organizer Shay Dee Mann. "All of the other fetuses will have a head start that will be hard to overcome."

Judges will mark scores in five main events: Best Ultrasound Presentation, Talent Show, Question & Answer, Amniotic Swimsuit Competition, and Closest Mother-Fetus Lookalike.

While these events may seem difficult to televise, the pageant's press kit boasts, "Modern technology makes this easy. We can show real-time ultrasound images, and more developed participants can communicate by kicking -- once for 'no', twice for 'yes'. The talent portion is quite fascinating to watch."

There's something about beauty pageants, fetus fetishists and DJ! that keeps getting us into trouble too, like the Time guy.

Beauty Pageants: Ptui!

In accordance with the three-day ultimatum from the director of Miss Right to Life Georgia beauty pageant, we have amended the blogpost that pissed her off.

Our reasons are put forth here.

As feminists, we at DJ! find all beauty pageants misogynist, exploitive, and reprehensible.

And there is that other small matter of using children, a practice that verges on pedophilia.

To tie a further misogynist anti-feminist cause -- forced birth -- to pageants is simply despicable.

However, to be fair, there are two points to be made.

1. The director of MRLG asserts in an email that her organization has nothing to do with 'Toddlers and Tiaras'. We have no reason to doubt her.

2. Georgia Right to Life has declined the proposed donation of funds raised by the auction of the 'Pretty Woman' hooker costume.

We at DJ! trust this is the end of this issue. Unless, of course, Miss Right to Life Georgia comes to our attention again.

The Greed-impaired World of Girls' Beauty Competitions.

What is scathingly wrong with the photo above?

Eden sang to her own kiddie-rap song “Cutie Patootie,’’ whose lyrics include references to “shakin’ her booty’’ and how she is all over the newspapers and the television screen. Whipping off a denim jacket during the performance, she twirled it above her head to reveal a two-piece, rhinestone-studded outfit to go with her cowboy hat, and smacked her backside for emphasis.

First hint: It accompanies a news item about Eden Wood and some of her 6-year old peers.

Second hint: The routines Wood and contestants in girls' beauty pageants chronicled by Toddlers & Tiaras are elaborated by adults, based on adult performances, judged by adults - and appeal to adult consumers' *appetites*.

Third hint: Though adults (parents, organizers, sponsors) involved in such events defend the hyper-sexualization of little girls by claiming the participants love all the attention they get, those who actually benefit financially from such displays are rarely the children.

Fourth hint: Try applying gender reversal to these activities. How would people respond to the hypersexualization of little boys, who arguably are as beautiful, adorable and appetizing as little girls are?

The Good Men Project, a loose network of men who challenge sexism and ideological assumptions that emprison men and women within gender-based caricatural behaviours and roles, has advanced some thoughtful ideas about this phenomenon.

Five-year-olds in princess costumes are cute. But the problem is that the compliments we give as fathers, uncles, and coaches have an impact on the self-esteem of little girls. As they grow up, they realize quickly (certainly by age 8 or 9) that Cinderella costumes won’t cut it anymore. If they want to sustain the same level of attention that they had when they were adorable first-graders, they’re going to need to employ a different strategy: sexiness. And that sexiness gets our attention all over again. [...]

[Girls' play-acting] sexiness has very little to do with sex, and everything to do with the craving for validation and attention. While all children want affirmation, princess culture teaches little girls to get that approval through their looks. Little girls learn quickly what “works” to elicit adoration from mom and dad, as well as from teachers, uncles, aunts, and other adults. Soon—much too soon—they notice that older girls and women get validation for a particular kind of dress, a particular kind of behavior. They watch their fathers’ eyes, they follow their uncles’ gaze. They listen to what these men they love say when they see “hot” young women on television or on the street. And they learn how to be from what they hear and see.

From here.

And if there were a remaining doubt that the increasingly competive environment of the fashion industry contributed to the hypersexualization of girls, this should dispel it. The blog Jezebel also provides valuable insights into this phenomenom.

Fashion images of girls years away from the age of consent who've been made by adult professionals to look "sexy" don't even register, to most people, as inappropriate — even though they obviously are, and even though the chances are that a successful 14-year-old model is working close to full-time hours with relatively little supervision (whereas most child models Thylane's age benefit from both a less all-encompassing work schedule and proper supervision). But then a magazine poses a 10-year-old in a similar kind of way to make a point about that very inappropriateness, and everyone is suddenly very concerned for The Children. The images are disturbing. They're meant to be. The point is that the practice they represent is disturbing, too.

But that Vogue Paris spread is not the photo spread that everyone has been criticizing. Child psychologists, journalists, fashion industry professionals, and bloggers have been drawing attention to the body of Thylane's work, not all of which is exactly age-appropriate. The Vogue Paris shots may be sensationalistic, but they're nowhere near as concerning as the topless shot of Thylane lying on a bed. Or that photo of Thylane posing, this time without any pants, on a (different) bed.

The line separating the hypersexualization of girls from child pornography has been blurred; adults are tampering with girls' sexual identity and expression for their own benefits, advantages and profits.

Link to an earlier DAMMIT JANET! post about Eden Wood and the validation of heterosexual pedophilia attitudes and behaviours.

Pissed-Off Beauty Pageant

Oh dear. We've pissed off the Director of Miss Right to Life of Georgia with this post.

In the comments and in an email, she says:

Pageant Director of MRTL said...

This is to advise you that you are using copyrighted and protected material on your website/blog. Your illegal use of photographs and text is originally from my website/blog called "Miss Right to Life of Georgia" at www.missrighttolife.com. This is original content and I am the author and copyright holder. Use of copyright protected material without permission is illegal under copyright laws.

Please remove the plagiarized material immediately.

I expect a response within 3 days to this issue. Thank you for your immediate action on this matter.

First, I don't think plagiarism means what she thinks it does.

Twentieth-century dictionaries define plagiarism as "wrongful appropriation," "close imitation," or "purloining and publication," of another author's "language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions," and the representation of them as one's own original work, but the notion remains problematic with nebulous boundaries. There is no rigorous and precise distinction between imitation, stylistic plagiarism, copy, replica and forgery.

I plagiarized nothing. I used direct quotation with proper attribution.

Then there's that little matter of what you in the US call 'fair use'.

Fair use, a limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work, is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, non-licensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-factor balancing test. The term fair use originated in the United States. A similar principle, fair dealing, exists in some other common law jurisdictions. Civil law jurisdictions have other limitations and exceptions to copyright.

Or what we in Canada call 'fair dealing'.

Now, IANAL, but it seems to me that DJ!'s use of the quoted material falls squarely under both 'fair use' and 'fair dealing'.

But perhaps Miss Right to Life of Georgia would like to consult their own lawyers on the matter.

The photo, charming though it may be, might be a horse of a different colour. DJ! is consulting our lawyer about that.

And yes, we fully realize that things are done differently in the Excited States, especially in ultra-'prolife' Georgia, where they are set to execute a black man named Troy Davis, against whom the case is shockingly weak, on September 21.

By those lights, what punishment does a little blogger in Canada poking fun at a beauty pageant deserve?

Suggestions welcome.

Image source

ADDED: I wonder if this gang got prior written permission.

*Pimp My Kid*

That should actually be the name of the TLC reality show about beauty pageants for little girls, not "Toddlers 'n' Tiaras".

My co-blogger posted about the latest display of venality and stupidity, here.

In the comments, DJ! readers wonder why women pimp their daughters in this manner.

Jezebel has a mind-boggling interview with someone who, I would venture to observe, is fairly typical of the venal and stupid mindset of these stage mothers. At one point, Stage Mommy describes the *enhancements* of the Dolly Parton outfit her daughter Maddy wears, which she herself wore as a child beauty pageant competitor, as "an added, y'know, extra bonus".

That woman sadly presents a stellar example of 'murrican "Caucasian debris" (more commonly known as white trash) mentality.

Nothing that I've seen, read or written about folks involved in this child exploitation shocks me. Though I'm puzzled that that none of the male judges for these beauty contests have ever been investigated or busted for kiddie porn.

There must a few of them, I'd reckon. Otherwise why would they do it? Imagine that job, the environment, the people you meet. Can it possibly be that lucrative, for the organizers?

Meanwhile, this is what some US kids consider child abuse, to the point of taking their mother to court.

'Pretty Toddler' - UPDATED

My head exploded this morning and what's a blog for if not to share such happy events?

To watchers of fetus fetishists, it's pretty damn clear that it's not about the baybeez, it's about the wimmin (George Carlin fix) and the sex.

So what to make of this twisty-brainy thing?

The controversial 'Pretty Woman' prostitute costume worn by a 3-year-old in TLC's popular reality TV show 'Toddlers & Tiaras' is being auctioned off, according to the child's mother, Wendy Dickey.

She told E! News that the outfit her daughter Paisley Dickey wore during the Queen of Hearts pageant is being sold because of the uproar it caused, with all proceeds from the sale to go to Georgia Right to Life, an anti-abortion group.

Dickey was slammed by parents who felt the costume was not appropriate for a toddler to wear.

She told E! she came up with the idea for Paisley to wear the dress after she learned there would be a celebrity wear portion of the Queen of Hearts competition.

“...so I thought of my favorite actress ever, Julia Roberts,” Dickey said. “I was trying to figure out which characters she could be, so I wanted 'Pretty Woman.' Nothing too revealing, but hysterically funny!”

The uproar was somewhat cooled by having the kid also appear in the polka-dot 'good girl' dress from the film.






Man. Some life. From hooker to good girl before she's 4. What's she got left to do?

The take-away: any parent who would sexualize her own child for profit (presumably) might as well go whole hog and turn the kid into a hookeresque caricature.

And even the proceeds going to charity I guess makes a strange kind of sense. (You know, not completely whorish.)

But a freaking anti-choice charity?????

After a quick Google, I found a bunch of anti-sexual abuse organizations, including this one, RAINN, Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network. I bet there are tons more good ones.

When I tweeted about this this morning, a pal replied with the hashtag #civilizationisdoomed.

Which about sums it up.

Here's a video if you have the stomach for it.

(Apologies to deBeauxOs whose corner this usually is: viz here and here.)

UPDATE: Mumsie's selection of charity maybe explained.

UPPITY-DATE: Georgia Right to Life has declined the offer.

Good news, Bad news story.

Good news: The president of Ecuador Rafael Correa stated in his weekly address that Beauty Pageants organized in public schools will no longer be authorized. He directed the Minister of Education Gloria Vidal to bring an end to these events which he qualified as sexist. He added: "Which educational values does it transmit? That physical beauty counts more than generosity, intelligence, effort and dedication?"

Bonus: In the US, a number of rightwing fundamentalist religious political crackpots were beauty queens in their youth: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachman and Anita Bryant for example.

Bad news: Correa deigned to lecture feminists about the evils of Beauty Pageants and wondered why they hadn't denounced these events.

Perhaps they're just too busy dealing with more urgent matters, such as helping women who have been subjected to savage violence and are seeking refuge or medical help.

In fact, feminists admire intelligent and dedicated beauty that's deployed judiciously to draw media attention and secure support for their community projects.

Some of the women in the centre, run by the Women´s Federation of Sucumbíos, told harrowing tales of beatings, incest and other forms of sexual and gender-based violence. Some women even have to resort to "survival sex" to get lodging to feed their children. Others fall prey to sexual exploitation.

Correa might concentrate instead on preaching to the men who abuse women and children, physically, sexually, emotionally and politically, as well as to the men who don't speak up against this violence.

What to Wear ...

on the Red Carpet, when you've finally decided that you're fed up with the whole vanity and vapidity thing, the inane worship of celebrity? Stylists be damned - didn't Meryl Streep claim she purchased the little black dress she wore to the Oscars on one occasion, back in the 1980s, right off a sales rack in a department store?

So, what to wear? This:

Doesn't Cate Blanchett's get-up look as though it has been crafted from a re-purposed, vintage afghan? How totally environmentally AND politically relevant. How cheerfully irreverent! Look at the smile on her face - she is having a good time with this fashion "faut-pas". As in: Il ne faut pas ...

By the way, we have written about fashion before. Here.

Miss California Is a Secret Canadian

I found this at Feministing. I'm going to be on the lookout for more from Jay Smooth.

Watch the video, then go read the comments.