Why are child beauty pageants so popular in the southern United States ?

21 comments

1. Im not sure I’d call them popular…

2. You may have a skewed idea of how popular they are. The vast majority of people have nothing to do with them, never been in one, never seen one, don’t know anyone who has.

3. How popular do you think they are?

4. They’re not.

5. child beauty pageants in the south? Where abouts?

6. A relatively small number of moms who were or wanted to be beauty pageant queens willing to spend large amounts of money to live vicariously through their kids. They’re not a popular pass time relative to the size of the population, but just like horse girls of your in pageantry you’re *in* pageantry

7. They are not popular.

   They get media attention because people think they are weird as hell.

   For the vast majority of the country and almost everyone that lives here these are not something they have participated in or ever experienced outside of online videos.

8. Agree with everyone else. This is a very niche event that gets more coverage than participation.

9. They’re not.

10. I wouldn’t call them *popular*, but they are a thing. There’s one at our county fair every year and the schools around here do them every year. Although, the school variety is more for middle and highschoolers. The one at the fair every year is toddler age.

    I think they are kind of gross when it’s little kids being forced onto stage for it who really don’t know wtf is going on. And for the teenager ones, at best, it just makes a bunch of other girls feel like shit while one gets to go home feeling like the best thing since sliced bread. Doesn’t seem worth it to me, but whatever.

    People do it because they want their daughters to win. It’s as simple as that. They want bragging rights or whatever. “my daughter is prettier than your daughter!”

11. They aren’t

12. there are entire TV shows in the US about these bc Americans think they’re very weird. if they were popular, that wouldn’t be a thing. even growing up in the south, they were widely regarded as weird by the people I knew there & I never knew anyone who was actually involved in one.

13. Those are very niche and most of us think they’re weird as hell. The oddity of it is why the TV shows came out.

14. Because it’s a very conservative part of the country, where many women marry and have kids while young and live lives where they are taught that a woman’s place is submissive in the household. As these women grow older they grow bitter that they’ve wasted their lives and try to live vicariously through their children. So they force the boys to play sports and the girls to do pageants so they can feel they’ve achieved something with their lives.

15. It’s like 4H contests at the county fair for growing the best livestock, but for religious fundies who want to sell off their daughter at 14 because that’s what daddy said Jesus wants

16. Does anyone actually ask questions on this sub or is it always just making bad assumptions about the US phrased as questions?

17. They’re not popular or liked anywhere in the US, and not in the South in particular. They’re probably just as popular down there as they are in your Chicagoland. I feel like this is just perpetuating negative stereotypes again based on the reddit view of America.

18. They aren’t popular. There aren’t any in my area. I wouldn’t even know where to go to see one.

19. That’s a great question. I find them so odd.

20. Tv isn’t real

21. Fat ugly mothers playing dolls with their children. Pedophile fathers letting them do it.