THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1997, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, January 22, 1997 TAG: 9701220039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 193 lines
FOUR-YEAR-OLD Kelsey Walke dressed in shimmering pink, her hair cascading in curls - didn't know quite what to say as she stood on stage of the Little Miss Virginia Beach beauty pageant.
``Ummmm,'' she said in response to the question of what she likes to do to relax.
``Ummmm, I don't know,'' she said, before rubbing her fist in her eye to keep from crying.
Little Kelsey's pageant performance - though unpolished - still charmed the judges, who gave her a second-runner-up trophy in the contest at the Virginia Beach Pavilion earlier this month.
By the end of the contest, Kelsey not only had a trophy in hand but also had the cameras of a newspaper photographer and a television crew trained on her and the other girls in the pageant.
Suddenly, child beauty contests - with their miniature tiaras and child-size sashes - have become center-stage news.
Not so much because of a sudden interest in aspiring beauty queens but rather because of a 6-year-old Colorado girl named JonBenet Ramsey.
The girl, a winner of countless child beauty pageants, including Little Miss Colorado, was found killed in her Boulder, Colo., home the day after Christmas. The ensuing publicity over the mysterious death has turned repeatedly to the subject of child beauty contests. Not because there's a suspicion that beauty contests contributed to her death but because of the flurry of photos and tapes of JonBenet that were released in the after-math:
Little JonBenet with hair elaborately styled and lightened, lips painted red, eyelashes laced with mascara. Little JonBenet trying to balance in tiny high-heeled shoes. Little JonBenet posing confidently in strapless ballgowns and sequined pageant attire.
Polly Pearce, who runs the local Little Miss Virginia Beach contest and several other pageants, said parents can definitely push their children too hard in such contests. She's seen it happen on more than one occasion.
She once saw a mother slap a child who didn't walk down the runway properly. And she's seen others try to paint their children's faces with so much makeup that they look like movie stars.
``I say to them, `We have to get that lipstick off,' '' said Pearce, who has conducted pageants for 30 years. ``I want these girls to be natural, to be themselves.''
Still, she can tell which contestants have had professional coaching by watching their just-so turns on the runways, their ambitious answers to the pageant questions - ``I want to be a world history professor and president of the United States'' - and their jaunty waves to the audience.
``Sometimes you can tell they've been programmed,'' she said.
Pearce says she tries to make sure her contests are free of pressure and that the children are having fun. Beauty contests, she said, should be about learning poise, gaining confidence and having fun.
``The more you can keep children interested in things, the better off they are,'' Pearce said. ``Being in a beauty program is not anything more than playing T-ball or soccer.''
Still, some local psychologists and social workers question the merit of such contests.
Burton Segal, a licensed clinical social worker in Norfolk, said his concern about beauty pageants is that they often cause ``age inflation'' by making children look older than they are.
``We try to grow them up too fast, and that can cause psychological problems,'' he said. ``We shouldn't push them to do things they're not ready to do.''
Ramsey, for instance, looks more like a 20-year-old than a kindergartner in some of the professional shots for which she posed. But the same kind of age inflation and unnecessary pressure can happen in other activities, such as Little League sports and ice skating and gymnastics.
``While some children can handle that kind of pressure, others can't,'' Segal said. ``And parents don't do well in being objective about their own children.''
While the impact of such contests may be linked to the degree of intensity, Virginia Beach psychologist David Zoll still can find very little good in child beauty contests, even if the approach is more casual.
``The disadvantages far outweigh whatever advantage there is,'' he said. ``The child who gets involved in them is taught to buy into the objectivity of women. They may say the contests are about grace and poise and all that, but the bottom line is really skin-deep, and there's so much more to a person than that.''
He said the ``beauty contest children'' he's treated have had difficulty developing a sense of independence and an inner sense of self.
``They vacillate between grandiosity and putting themselves down. Those are different sides of the same coin of shaky self-esteem,'' said Zoll, who readily admits that the number of such children he has seen is biased toward those having problems.
Alice Twining, a licensed clinical psychologist, said she has concerns that contests could cause girls to dwell upon a ``svelte'' self image, especially those more inclined toward little-girl pudginess. She worries that that could lead to a distorted sense of self, and even to eating disorders.
``I don't want any child to feel they are just a pretty face and have to stop playing because they need to learn their lines,'' said Twining, who works at the Wellspring Psychotherapist Center in Virginia Beach.
However, she believes that as long as parents put the contests into proper perspective, the pageants may be harmless activities. ``It's a matter of degree,'' she said.
Erin Walke began entering her daughter, Kelsey, in child beauty contests about eight months ago. Since then, Kelsey has been in five or six pageants. Atop a bureau in Kelsey's pink bedroom is the bounty of those contests: 19 trophies, ranging from first runner-up to ``Prettiest Hair.'' Satiny sashes with titles like ``Olympic Miss'' and ``America's Elite.'' Sparkling tiaras.
``Most people think these contests are just about beauty, but it's how you carry yourself, how your dress fits, a lot of different things,'' Walke said.
She agrees that some parents go too far in pushing their children in beauty contests, but she doesn't count herself among them. ``There's the same danger with skating and football and anything else, you can go too far. It's up to the parent to make sure that doesn't happen,'' she said.
Walke has only entered Kelsey in local contests and has not participated at the regional and state levels.
``I think it's fun,'' said Kelsey as she hopped around the living room.
``The more dressy the dress, the happier she is,'' her mother said.
While beauty contests have been around for eons, the real growth in them has occurred in the younger age groups, according to one industry expert.
Ted Cohen, who publishes the International Directory of Pageants, said his most recent directory lists 3,000 pageants across the country, but he estimates the true number is closer to 5,000.
He says about 25 percent of them are for divisions under high school age.
``Children's pageants have become very lucrative,'' he said. ``That's why people who initially just ran adult pageants began adding divisions for children. Independent children's programs added even more contests, with even more children getting involved.''
Between professional photo shots, modeling lessons, pageant training and costumes that cost hundreds of dollars a pop, parents can turn beauty pageants into a very costly pastime.
Although some contests come with cash prizes, they also usually have entrance fees, typically about $50 at the local level.
``There are some mothers who think they have a gold mine in their children,'' said Cohen, who is based in Miami. ``They invest everything in it.''
On a stage twinkling with lights and set with winter-themed props, six girls from 4 to 7 years old competed for the title of Little Miss Virginia Beach earlier this month.
Their performances ranged from tentative walks out from behind the curtain to confident sweeps across the stage and salutes to the audience. While some girls wore frilly dresses with lace and ruffles for the ``evening gown'' competition, others wore more sophisticated pageant dresses with sequins and trailing skirts.
``In this part of the contest, our judges will be looking for an overall first impression and statement of poise and personality,'' the pageant hostess announced before asking each contestant a question.''
``Do you have a pet, and what is your pet's name?'' she asked 4-year-old Brittany Tatem.
The sportswear and evening gown competitions led to the finale walk and finally the crowning of winners.
While each of the girls won some kind of prize, a beaming Whitney Morgan walked away with the top prize, complete with a towering trophy and a rhinestone tiara.
At 7, Whitney is a beauty pageant veteran who entered her first contest when she was 2. Her mother, Sherry Morgan, said she stopped entering her in contests for a while, but then one day Whitney said, ``Mom, I'd like to do a pageant again.''
And so she did.
``I like it because you wear pretty dresses,'' said Whitney. ``And I like the part where they do the win-ners.''
Morgan said her own positive experience entering contests as a girl led her to enter her daughter in beauty shows. ``I did the pageants when I was a teen-ager, and it's great for self-esteem and for making yourself more into a little lady, the female aspect of it,'' she said.
She considers the criticism directed at pageants because of JonBenet Ramsey's death unfair to parents who involve their children on a more balanced level of contest.
After Whitney won her Little Miss Virginia Beach crown, her parents took her to a restaurant to celebrate. She was still wearing her dress and tiara, and a woman standing behind her in line said, ``I can't believe they let that little girl do that.''
Morgan turned to her and said, ``Pretty is as pretty does, and my daughter is beautiful.''
She realizes that many parents go overboard in pushing their children onto the stage, but she doesn't think she'd ever become a stage mother.
``If she got an attitude about it, I wouldn't let her do them,'' Morgan said. ``But right now she can do as many as she wants.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos Beth Bergman/The Virginian-Pilot
TOP: Do contests like the Little Miss Virginia Beach Pageant rob
girls of their individuality? From Left, Raven Tucker, Whitney
Morgan, Jade Williams, Katelyn Falk, Kelsey Walke and Brittany
Tatem.
Left: Bonita Williams frantically ties her daughter's shoes as Jade
gazes at herself in the mirror.
RIGHT: Kelsey Walke looks at her competition from the wings during
the Little Miss Virginia Beach Beauty contest.
Sygma Photo
ABOVE: Color photo [JonBenet Ramsey in the summer of 1995.)
Photo by VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot
Raven Tucker, 6, checks her makeup before competing in the Little
Miss Virginia Beach pageant. Her mother, Robin Tucker, looks on.
KEYWORDS: BEAUTY PAGEANT