Toddlers and Tiaras and Self-Esteem

Recently a good friend of mine—a mother and grandmother—came totally and uncharacteristically unglued when she told me about a Toddlers and Tiaras (T&T) program she had seen. Her anger, directed at the mothers, was brutal. They feed their kids sugar cubes to keep them pumped up, spend thousands of dollars on over-the-top outfits, and seem oblivious to the damage done to their kids’ self-esteem. My question was how do you know it hurt their self-esteem?

No Tiaras, make-up, or hair do here! Any conversation about kids placed in serious competition by their parents elicits emotional debate about the pros and cons of winning, failure, and effects on self-esteem. Until we get more specific about what self-esteem is and what it stems from these conversations will always cast more heat than light on the subject.

Toddlers and Tiaras is a reality TV beauty pageant for young girls and their parents. It cranks up the intensity of the critics’ response because it tends to sexualize little girls with thousands of dollars-worth of costumes, make-up, and hair-dos more appropriate for someone in their twenties than for five and six year olds.

The goal today is to show that the effects of such competitions are better understood if we look at their impact on the individual characteristics that make up self-esteem and rather than considering their impact on self-esteem as a whole.

A year of study and research culminated in identifying 27 abilities and characteristics which contribute to verbal, interpersonal, and physical self-esteem. Together they form an objective system which better enables us to assess whether competitions such as T&T are beneficial or harmful to a child’s self-esteem.

Does the T&T experience do anything to increase verbal self-esteem? Verbal self-esteem increases when you are satisfied more than dissatisfied with the following six characteristics: ability to express yourself, intelligence, power of concentration, comprehension ability, thinking ability, and listening ability. The question to ask is which of these characteristics are enhanced or diminished by the competition?

What about interpersonal self-esteem? High interpersonal self-esteem is reflected in satisfaction with twelve abilities and characteristics: friendliness, helpfulness, humour, facial appearance, confidence in your ability to move easily and gracefully, openness and honesty, amount of tenseness and nervousness, ability to be relaxed with others, complexion, temper, shyness, and amount of conceit and vanity.

A good thing about T&T is that the girls learn to handle the pressure of performance resulting in confidence in movements, less nervousness, and less shyness, all of which increase self-esteem. However, there are some negatives. For example, the judges place heavy emphasis on facial appearance and complexion so despite how pretty they are many little girls will feel their face and complexion don’t measure up leading to lower interpersonal self-esteem.

As for the other interpersonal characteristics there is no expectation that the girls be particularly friendly, helpful, humorous, honest, or modest so those factors would not contribute to high self-esteem. The T&T experience could make them overly vain and less honest since the whole costume and make-up routine is designed to portray them as something they are not which would lower self-esteem.

Finally, high physical self-esteem is a product of satisfaction with nine characteristics and abilities including: health, agility and athletic ability, neatness and cleanliness, walk, body shape, posture, weight, coordination, and clothes. T&T has little to do with health and agility. However, if they do not place well in the competition it means their walk, body shape, posture, weight, and clothes are lacking some sizzle.

So when embroiled in a discussion about whether a situation is good or bad for a kid’s self-esteem, ask if it enhances or diminishes how they feel about these 27 characteristics, draw your conclusion from that, and live well between your ears.