Parents with higher incomes and education beyond high school often cite teaching a child how to deal with competition as a main reason for entering pageants. Many of them want their daughters to be doctors, dentists, or to have professional careers, Levey discovered in interviews.

Moms on lower socioeconomic levels also think competition is healthy. "My daughter looks like Barbie," one said. "I tell her to exploit it. This is your life; you take what you have and run with it." A high percentage of parents said they enter their children into beauty contests so they can meet others. "Pageants help my daughter make friends," one mother noted. Other parents put their children into the competitions because they themselves found them to be helpful. "Pageants were a positive experience for me," another mom commented. "I became less shy, learned about public speaking, gained job interview skills, and got rid of a heavy Maine accent."

"While the mother of the crying girl in the pink sequined dress may be competitive while wanting the best for her daughter," Levey observes, "it appears that the little girl will be doing the same for her child a generation from now."

Three parents who were interviewed put their children into pageants because they have birth defects. "Her plastic surgeon thinks it's wonderful because he sees parents hide their children with a facial defect," according to one mother, whose daughter has a cleft palate. "We don't go for competition or for her to win. We go to meet other children and parents. We don't want her to think she's different, that she isn't beautiful."

The primary reason people do not participate in pageants, Levey found, was the so-called "JonBenet factor." "The murder has attracted so much media attention, it has made pageants socially unacceptable to many people," she explains. Secondary reasons include costs and believing the contests are too competitive, too "grown-up."

Levey intends to keep observing and interviewing at pageants until she presents her findings in August before the American Sociological Association. Afterward, she is thinking about expanding the research into a comparison with Little League and other competitive childhood activities.

She also sees law school in her future. "I want to go into government service and get involved in policy work," Levey says. "I think that trying to understand why people do the things they do is a good way to prepare for such a career."

Source: hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2000/06.08/beauty.html