I am so glad to read all the wonderful posts here about all your feelings on this subject matter. It is one that I have had a passion against for years.

The sad part is is that the mothers of these girls aren't showing their daughters where their true value & self worth comes from within,....not from how they look. But how many of the mothers have any value or self-worth of their own? If they had they would know that this isn't where they would want their daughters to go or the life style they would want to start their daughters walking in.

How many times to you hear the mother saying how much their daughter wants to do the pageant stuff & how important it is to their child......yea, after they have been brainwashed into thinking that's all there is to life......what else would they think.

Everyone needs attention......that's a given......but that kind of attention is inappropriate & harmful to the child's self worth.

I think it's funny, but I used to show my eskie dogs in the confirmation dog shows.......when I saw the girls in the beauty pagents like that, the first thing that came to my mind was little girl dog shows without a leash. If this facial feature or bone structure isn't quite right, it isn't a good showing of the breed or is disqualified if the eyes aren't the perfect colour. First off, little girls aren't dogs & should never be made to feel like the only thing that give them any value is how they look, & how they can perform.

True, some competition in life is good, never let it be said that I didn't give the guys a good run for their lunch break on the racquettball court & beat them whenever I got the good shots......but to parade around the stage showing off ones body is just plain disgusting.

It's interesting that as the generations go on that this only gets worse than better. As the entertainment industry gets a tighter grasp on people....not only the ones that want to be involved in it but the ones that support it by watching. When did this begin.......when will it finally end? What is their way of justifying these pagaents? Of course, they claim that it's the scholarship money that they are going after so their kids can afford college.......yea, like can you see these kids wanting to go to college.....by the age of 18 they will be wanting to use the money for all the plastic surgeries they will be needing because they are getting older & wrinkles.

It is so hard not to get sarcastic when it comes to this subject....it is just so sad to see children being provided these values rather than the wonderful values that everyone here has talked about having from their childhood.here. Wishing that these children could have a normal enjoyable childhood of getting into things & really being a kid rather than striving to look like the glamor photo their mother always wanted to look like.

I know that I would never trade growing up in a neighborhood of all guys, building forts, climbing trees & walking fences, looking for lizards in the desert & fishing in the lakes & streams, playing baseball & football in the street. Learning that my value wasn't in how I looked.......but that my education was something that could never be taken away from me & what was in my mind was more important that how my face looked. I wasn't into the little girl things, playing house or doll, but when I was stuck inside on bad weather days, I brought out my farm set & my cabin set & my toy cars & animals & created my own rural town in the middle of the front room.

So many of us fought the values that we thought our parents were cramming down our throats....when will these children do the same?

wow, these keep getting bigger all the time..lol. This is just one thing I have always had a passion against so when it came up here, it opened the flood gates of thoughts.

I just hope that some year people will come to their senses before like nucking Futz says..they all end up here..lol. There may not be enough qualified T's in the world to help all the issues that we end up having from things like this

OK.....enough now.....I go back into my quiet corner after writing my novel here on my feelings about this.