beauty pageants

The False Promises of Being Beautiful

Mon, 05/11/2009 - 22:57
Submitted by Betty Dodson

Truthout's piece on child beauty pageants brought back a painful memory from childhood.  Mother was nearly perfect except the time she entered me in a beauty contest when I was five. I wore a two piece bathing suit with a BIG bow on top of my Shirley Temple sausage curls. Mother rehearsed me to walk up to the front of the stage, put my hand on my hip and say, "Why don't you come up and see me sometime?"

I was the sweet little girl on the Good Ship Lollypop combined with Mae West, the most brazen outspoken sexual woman of her time. On the day of the contest I was running a fever but determined to follow through.