A Judgment Call on Children's Beauty Pageants

January 16, 1997|Scott Harris

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Months before the murder of little JonBenet Ramsey found its way to the evening news and the cover of Newsweek, a Santa Clarita woman, Marie Sprague, was troubled by the sight of children wearing cosmetics. As the proprietor of a pageant company called California's Cutest Kids, she had seen plenty.

"To see girls who are 3 and 4 and 5 years old with all that heavy makeup, well, I just think little girls should look like little girls."

Sprague is a former model and modeling instructor who entered the bustling child pageant biz 1 1/2 years ago. She has staged the San Fernando Valley's Cutest Kids, Santa Clarita's Cutest Kids, Antelope Valley's Cutest Kids, Thousand Oaks' Cutest Kids. Similar events have been organized by such companies as America's Darling Little Darlings, California Young American Miss International, Miss American Beauty, Enchanted Pageants and Ebony Beauty Pageants.

Sprague says she's "99% sure" that California's Cutest Kids will add a new rule: no makeup for girls under age 13.

Judges, she explains, are instructed to look for natural beauty. "How can they see natural beauty when they're wearing all that makeup?"

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Interesting question. A better one is whether children should be paraded on stage and subjected to such judgments at all.

That was the question I brought to an assignment several years ago. An editor had opened a Manila envelope and found a studio-quality head shot of a stunning teenage cover girl with an unmistakable come-hither look. He did a double take and read the press release. This girl was 5 years old.

The girl--call her Tiffany--was very much like JonBenet. Her proud papa boasted how she had entered 19 pageants and won 12, how she was always named Most Photogenic, how she already had a Hollywood agent.

Expecting the worst, I visited with a photographer. Very soon dad was coaxing Tiffany to favor us with a song. Shyly, she did so:

Start spreading the news

I'm leaving today . . .

I would spend several hours over three days with the family, following Tiffany's progress through a statewide pageant. Perhaps they were on their best behavior, but the impression of overbearing stage parents soon melted. Tiffany seemed happy, her parents decent and loving. They weren't at all like, say, the father of my old Little League teammate, a man who once entered the dugout to