Beauty Pageants: Would you enter your daughter?

[Rinji]

I'm young and still have a ways to go before I can settle down and properly raise a family.

I see entering your baby daughter in a pageant might be okay.
But these young girls a lot of times have parents make it their lives to be in pageants. Sometimes even making a living off their daughter. :ohno

What would drive anyone to do that? And would you enter your daughter in a non-baby beauty pageant, even if it was just once? Any person stories or experiences? What's the mentality behind it?

I'm interested in everyone's input :)

[quiet_kate]

I would say no because if you look at some of the clothes they have to wear...they are really unGodly...I mean, if you could find a good Christian pageant it might be different, but otherwise, definitely not!

[BeNotAfraid]

Nope. I don't want my girls focusing on their looks, seeking approval because of their looks, learning to regurgitate answers that judges want to hear, walking around in a bathing suit on display for all to see... No way!

[icebear]

no, i think it would put the wrong emphasis on the wrong thing.

[HSmomto4]

NO!

[wife]

Nope. I don't want my girls focusing on their looks, seeking approval because of their looks, learning to regurgitate answers that judges want to hear, walking around in a bathing suit on display for all to see... No way!

I am in total agreement here. Plus can you imagine what a girl goes through if she loses.... I don't want my dd thinking that her worth is in her looks

[twelvesmaster]

Inner beauty is more important -- the kind that God can look upon and be pleased. The sooner young girls (and boys) learn this, the better.

[icebear]

my mom let me and my sister try a beauty contest when we were very little (i was 3 and sister was 6). but they were minor things, mainly for the fun of dressing up little girls in party dresses and ohhhing and ahhh-ing about how precious we all were. there were some moms who kept it going and i remember growing up with the girls who contested many weekends and they didn't like it much.

it definitely wasn't up my alley, during my debut i chased down and killed a bug on stage and wiped my face with the hem of my dress.... i was not a very ladylike child. :)

[jadeeyes]

No. I always believed and still believe that my daughter is beautiful, but I would never subject her to that type of judgemental scrutiny of her looks. Of course, due to her disability, she never would have been able to wear the dressy shoes that would be required anyway. On what I think is a related topic, my youngest son is very talented athletically. While he was allowed to particpate in sports, I didn't want to make sports all important in his life. He always loved to golf and was very good at it. In fact, he went to Australia and Hawaii when he was 17, for golf. He was chosen for this honor and we allowed him to go. He probably could have gone on to make golf his career if he had spent a lot more time on the golf course training. I, however, was concerned about placing too much emphasis on golf and not enough on more important things like his relationship with Christ and his relationships with other people. It's very easy to get carried away with sports, looks and just about anything and forget that these things are ell temporary. We need to help our children to learn to place the things of eternal value ahead of these temporal things.

[BelovedChild]

I would not. I never put any of my five child into any contest. As far as I was concerned, I had the five most beautiful babies in the whole world. They were followed by the 7 (soon to be 8) most beautiful grandchildren. Of course, I am not biassed (not much).

I saw a proverb once which said There is only one beautiful baby in the world and every mother has him or her.

Seriously, every child is beautiful and unique. Let us set an example and treasure of the our children. Even if a child looks homely or fat or whatever, we need to look into the soul and to seek the beauty within each and every child.