Our internet host (WordPress.com) had this image on the login page that caught my eye. It is from Venezuala, and the accompanying blog entry describes (how accurately, I don’t know), the Venezuelan obsession with beauty pageant culture.
What I see is the hyper-sexualization of children, something that gets under my skin like little else. It is nearly child pornography. Children pretend at being grown-up all the time, but the adult orchestration of sexual behavior is another matter entirely (even worse is that these girls are probably being watched over carefully by their mothers). We could find similar images in America as well. Many so called “dance” troops that young girls participate in and perform in at basketball games or parades, are similarly sexualized. Why any parent would want their young daughter shaking her booty like a Laker Girl is beyond me. To think that it is “fun” or “cute” is, frankly, abusive to children. Recently we have the case of a major American retailer selling thong underwear to pre-teen girls as young as 7 years old.
I am bewildered at many things, but perhaps none more than how anyone–conservative, Marxist, feminist, libertarian, atheist, what have you — can think that the increasing sexualization of young children is a good thing. If this is what Western liberal values leads to, it is not hard to see why many around the world are turned off by liberalism. I came across this picture right after reading Damon Linker’s eloquent and disturbing post in TNR (which I hope to respond to later) on our liberal, “centerless” society. Truly if this kind of image isn’t offensive to most people, we are not only centerless, but completely decadent and without hope.
PILEUS 
Looking forward to any comments you might have in response to my post (book excerpt) on the centerless society — some of which you heard me present at a BYU poli sci Tuesday Group 10 or 11 years ago! (You seemed to like it at the time!)
Yes, I’m hoping to make some comments, assuming I can get my thoughts to congeal around some sort of coherent viewpoint.
I can say that I thought your description of the dawn of liberalism and how it was so different from what came before was extremely well written–maybe the best summary I have ever read (though I’m easily fooled!)
“Or what?”
Of course this is stupid and wrong and mostly reflects on the bad parents. But are you going to take these kids away from their parents for this? Or cage the parents for it?
Liberal societies tolerate quite a bit of nonsense. Fortunately, people are mostly smart and this is probably a 1/10000 occurrence.
Required viewing: Little Miss Sunshine.
I’m not proposing any policy response.
It would be nice if you were right, but I think you vastly underestimate how often things like this occur.
You’re right. According to this:
http://www.minorcon.org/pageants.html
there are 250,000 participants in 3,000 pageants per year. If we assume that these are all underage children (I don’t have a problem with 16 & 17 year olds doing County Fair beauty pageants, but they are still children) and that each of those 250,000 participations is unique, that the number is all US, and that there are 75 million children in the US, then it’s 1/300. So, one kid affected at my children’s school.
I’d guess it’s more like half of those are under-age and maybe there’s a factor of 6 overlap among entrants, but even at that it’d still be a 1/4000 problem. Some actual data would be useful, but I didn’t find it quickly.
Bill, as I noted, I’m not talking just about beauty pageants (which are just a piece of the phenomenon).
I’d like to think the sexualization of small children is rare, but I’m not sure it is.
Oh my goodness that is picture is very wrong in all levels. What kind of parents would dare to say that is cute? To me it’s inappropriate and yucky.