American Moms Reject French Effort to Ban Honey Boo Boos
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Hemera/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — At age 6, Piper Parks is a stunning redhead with flowing hair extensions, fake eyelashes and piercing eyes, one green and one blue. With the help of coaches and a $2,400 bejeweled dress, she has taken top prize at numerous beauty pageants since the age of 10 months.
“For beauty, she has a full mega-glitz dress,” said her mother, Katie Parks, 39, and a former Miss Country Western Arizona. “She’s a die-hard pageant girl.”
Parks said pageants have given her once-shy girl self-esteem, diverse friendships and the ability to perform on stage, something neither mother nor daughter would ever give up, she said.
Child beauty pageants are a distinctly American phenomenon that, with the success of reality shows like TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras, have been recently exported abroad.
But this week in a surprise vote, the French Senate proposed an outright ban on these over-the-top competitions for children under the age of 16.
The political debate, aimed at discouraging the sexualization of young girls, arose on the heels of Paris Fashion Week and discussion of a women’s rights law.
The legislation still needs to be approved by the lower house of parliament. Violators — not just the contestants but their parents or pageant organizers or anyone who “encourages or tolerates children’s access to these competitions” — could face up to two years in prison and an estimated $40,000 in fines.
The recent French pageant vote came two years after child model Thylane Loubry Blondeau, who had been modeling since the age of 5, appeared in a sexually charged pose in French Vogue at the age of 10. The Parisian preteen, made-up, dressed in high heels and haute couture, reignited a debate about the the messages young girls receive about beauty and sex.
But Parks, who lives in Strawberry, Ariz., sees it differently.
“Wow,” she told ABC News, in response to the proposed French ban. “I think that’s way too much government control.”
“I find more positives than negatives,” she said. “I don’t think it’s any worse than another sport a child plays. And it is a sport. You have to get good at it to achieve a higher title or award. I have seen massive improvement in her self-confidence. She went from being a shy child on stage to in-your-face look at me. I am really cool.”
“And it almost forces families to spend more time together,” Parks said. “We do a lot of traveling. Where most kids are lucky to go on vacation once a year, we are on vacation once a week.”
Tami Soudbakhsh, director of the Little Miss and Mrs. Pageants in Las Vegas, was dead set against high-glitz child beauty pageants when she worked in the mental health field.
“The make-up, the fake teeth, the fake tan, kids forced to do it by their moms,” said Soudbakhsh, 49.
About eight years ago, she entered the field, first in so-called “natural” beauty pageants and later in the high-glitz ones.
She quickly changed her mind when she saw the “self-esteem” these American pageants brought to children and their families.
“Oh, they love it, the hair and the make-up. Every kid gets a tiara. They hear their name, and there is a winner, no matter what,” said Soudbakhsh.
“They get to perform, and it’s all about family bonding — no one understands that,” she said. “The dads are making props and the moms are making outfits. The other kids are sitting on the couch as fake judges. I had a mom with a troubled teen who said it was so important to helping her keep her kid on the right track.”
Another pageant mom was just as indignant about any possibility of a ban on beauty pageants crossing the Atlantic.
“I think it’s ridiculous — France is totally different from the United States,” said India McDougald, whose 5-year-old daughter, Aja, will be on an upcoming episode of Toddlers and Tiaras.
McDougald said Aja, who has been competing since she was 2 and was recently on Toddlers and Tiaras, had made friends at pageants.
“I don’t like them, but she enjoys herself,” she said. “I never force her to do them.”
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