authenticguccishoes

t is remarkable that in a world walloped by economic recession, when there are wars, uprisings, carbon

controversies and assaults on liberty, people can muster up the passion to protest against a beauty pageant.

Listening to the mix of mums and feminists who have taken up arms against an American-style junior beauty

pageant in Melbourne over the past week, you could be forgiven for thinking that this rather innocent parade

of pretty princess-wannabes is something akin to the seventh circle of hell.

"These children are absolutely being put in harm's way", declared child psychotherapist Collet Smart, who

somehow, by osmosis maybe, seems to know better than parents themselves what is good for their children.

Smart took a look around the pageant, braving the noxious fumes in the clouds of fake-tan spray and the

stench of cheap perfume in order that she could report to the horrified world outside what goes on inside

these ugly beauty pageants.

The terrible sights she beheld will be burned into her memory forever. "There was a four-year-old dressed up

as Lady Gaga", she reported. "And there was Sandy from Grease, in the black leathers." Oh, the humanity!

Apparently there is only one solution to this travesty of childish dressing-up: call the cops. Smart

declared that "those parents" (you know who she means: bogans who prettify their daughters) "are allowing

[their children] to be judged and so that means that we need to have the state involved, yes".

So the state should intervene every time a parent allows their kid to be judged? Does that mean we will soon

see the forces of the state barging into concert halls in which 10-year-olds battle it out to see who is the

best violinist - or is it only the largely suburban mums who love to put their little girls in pink dresses

and tiny high heels who should be investigated and possibly reprimanded by the powers-that-be? Yes, I

thought so.

Bernie Geary, the inaugural child safety commissioner in Victoria, has actually been asked by the protesters

to investigate whether entering a child into a beauty pageant constitutes child abuse.

This stretches the definition of "child abuse" to breaking point, so that it can apparently include not only

beatings and serious neglect but also having a harmless costume-based pastime that presumably both parent

and child enjoys. What next - arrest "those parents" who allow their littl'uns to go out dressed like

vampires (evil and sexy) or ghosts (dead and scary) on Halloween?

The most outrageous language has been used to describe the mums who let their daughters enter beauty

pageants. They've been called "creepy" and "crazy", and have even been accused of prostituting their

daughters – "Primp or pimp?" said one particularly provocative headline, while others have said these girls

are "fodder for paedophiles".

A lot of this is driven by naked, old-fashioned, bogan-bashing snobbery, a deep disdain for those suburban

folk who have such inferior pastimes to the more decent sections of society.

Just look at some of the online discussion threads, where "cashed-up bogans" are slated for forcing their

daughters to pluck their eyebrows and parade around in cheerleader gear, while others call on the authors of

the super-snobby site Things Bogans Like to add an entry on "the bogan fodder that is kiddie beauty

pageants". Some Australians are discussing their fellow Australians in almost anthropological terms, viewing

their cultural habits in the same way that those British bible-bashing missionaries to Africa looked with

horror upon the clothing and dancing style of tribal women and their over-sexualised offspring.

These unhinged haters of beauty pageants seriously need to calm down. Girls have been dressing up as little

women for as long as mirrors have existed, whether they were standing in their mum's high heels and using a

hairbursh to lip-synch to Madonna songs or wearing mini-skirts a year or two before their fathers would have

preferred.

Many of the critics of beauty pageants claim that these events "sexualise" young girls. There is indeed a

problem with child sexualisation today, but the pageant-protesters have picked the wrong target.

At a time when experts and officialdom have developed the very bad habit of interpreting many forms of

childish behaviour as being sexual, from old-style games like "doctors and nurses" to the sending of rude

text messages, it is a bit bizarre to blame a handful of pageant-loving mums for sexualising kids.

We live in an era when it seems that childish or teenage behaviour can no longer be treated simply as

harmless fun or experimentation. So those oracles of wisdom, child psychologists, frequently call for sex

education to be taught to children at the earliest opportunity, in order to help them understand and

negotiate interaction between the sexes, while teens who send each other "sext messages" can end up on the

Sex Offenders Register.