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Date Posted: 23:42:18 11/20/07 Tue
Are America's living dolls still living a nightmare?
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 17/11/2006Page 1 of 6
Red Bull, fake teeth and hair extensions – yes, the junior beauty pageant season is under way. And, 10 years after JonBenet Ramsey's murder, Michael Shelden discovers that little has changed in that bizarre world
Your view: pretty or provocative?
In pictures: a very peculiar practice
The beauty queen flashes a big smile and stares straight into the video camera like an old pro, not batting an eyelid.
The taste of victory: Regan Licciardello
Surrounded onstage by balloons, teddy bears and trophies almost twice her height, pretty Regan Licciardello accepts her cash prize of $1,000 and proudly shows it to the crowd at the Universal Royalty Pageant in Austin, Texas, fanning out the banknotes like a gambler's winnings.
"Make sure we position the money just right," the pageant director says from offstage. A moment later the display of notes across her winner's sash is in perfect alignment with Regan's smile. It is the kind of pose you'd expect of a Vegas showgirl, but this girl in a sequined dress and heavy make-up is only five years old.
It has been 10 years since the death of JonBenet Ramsey, who was a beauty queen at six, and whose unsolved murder cast a spotlight on the glitzy and fiercely competitive world of children's pageants. Almost every story about the murder carried images of JonBenet dolled up like an adult, staring vacantly into the camera or prancing onstage in a cowgirl outfit singing: "I want to be a cowboy sweetheart."
When John Mark Karr – an itinerant teacher with an obsession about young girls – was briefly held as a suspect in her murder earlier this year, people leapt to the conclusion that he had once stalked her. Old footage of her grainy videos was aired again, making it seem that the bizarre world of pre-pubescent showgirls belonged to the past.
advertisementBut it never went away. Thousands of American mothers are still painting eye shadow and lip gloss on their little daughters and entering them in pageants week after week, as I discovered this month.
More than 3,000 beauty contests for children are held in America each year. One of JonBenet's titles was "Little Miss Colorado", but the epicentre of the pageants is Texas, where the competition to win a major title on the popular Universal Royalty circuit is intense.
What I found there earlier this month at the start of the pageant season in Texas is that JonBenet's old cowgirl routine wouldn't raise an eyebrow. If anything, it would be regarded as a little tame by parents whose determination to make their daughters glamorous hasn't been affected in the least by the unsolved case of the murdered queen.
Continued
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