Six-year-old Ariel Kerby of north suburban Lake Villa stood in her fluorescent orange jumpsuit and assumed the beauty pageant photo position: one foot perpendicular to the other, chin up, a smile revealing tiny white baby teeth.
Ariel is in kindergarten, but she is also in training. Being the apple of her parents’ eyes will not make her the next Little Miss Midwest Rainbow Fantasies in June.
On the other hand, professional coaching by Desiree Russell–a competitor since childhood, experienced judge and now pageant director who could punch up her pro-am modeling routine or teach her the tornado spin–just might.
So Ariel worked the imaginary catwalk in Russell’s Gurnee home, while the impeccably coiffed Russell critiqued.
“Pause so they can see the back of your outfit.” “Remember to look at all five judges.” “Are you paying attention?”
But when she tried to recite her brief autobiographical speech, Ariel got through her name, her interest in singing and dance, her hopes of becoming a nurse–then forgot what came next.
She froze, started again and froze again. Then her face crumpled.
Her mother, Sherri Kerby, rushed up. “It’s OK,” Kerby soothed. “You’re not competing now.”
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Russell offered reassurance, but also a warning: “You don’t want them to take points off.”
Then Ariel recited the whole speech and finished to hugs and praise.
To her mother, Ariel had learned to overcome an obstacle. Her tears expressed nothing more than the ordinary frustration of a child learning something new, like skating or playing the violin.
“She loves it,” said Kerby, who runs a heating and cooling business with her husband from their home. “It’s for fun–it’s not cutthroat.”
Until the death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey, found slain in her Boulder, Colo., home the day after Christmas, the world of children’s beauty pageants existed as a large but largely invisible subculture whose sequins and sashays confined themselves to the stages of hotel ballrooms and pages of small-town newspapers.
In the weeks since, however, videotapes and photographs of JonBenet competing in children’s pageants–in heavy makeup, tiny high heels and glitzy costumes–have incited as much discussion about this aspect of her life as the still-unsolved mystery of her death.
There is no indication that pageants had anything to do with JonBenet’s slaying, but those in the pageant world know they are currently on public trial for a pursuit some compare to child abuse.
Many won’t talk to reporters now. Those who do insist that the images of JonBenet represent only a fraction of an insular but highly schismatic industry scattered throughout the country, including the Midwest.
The Little Miss Windy City pageant, in fact, is taking place this weekend at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago.
Pageants, parents say, can develop girls’ confidence, open professional doors and help them win money for college. And at least one expert says class bias contributes to the distaste some people feel toward this often blue-collar hobby.
But aspects of pageants disturb even their devotees. Seven-year-olds wear false teeth, false eyelashes and colored contact lenses. They use tanning beds.
Two-year-olds get coached at the tune of $75 or more an hour. A 6- month-old baby can win a new car.
To outsiders, pageantry is a peculiar world in which parents live through their children, a disturbing anachronism that judges girls on their looks and personality, instead of their accomplishments.
But pageants are, first and foremost, big business. The president of one pageant association, EPIC International Associates in Beaverton, Ore., estimates the industry at $5 billion, if you count everything from the girls’ shoes and hairstylists to their trainers and crowns, not to mention the costs of pageant advertising.
Children’s pageants attract some 150,000 to 250,000 competitors a year, according to Charles Dunn, publisher of Pageantry magazine. And they are the fastest-growing segment of the industry.
Among them, to name but a few, are America’s Sophisticated Miss National Grand Supreme, Miss and Master Dazzling Star, World’s Lovely Lady, Miniature Miss Gastonia and the Grand Supreme King of Kings (and Queen of Queens).
All these Misses and the handful of Kings (yes, there are boys too) compete in one or another of about 3,000 pageant systems.
“Systems” generally consist of preliminary, state and national contests, but beyond that, each pageant is its own beast.
Most are small businesses, often started by pageant judges, coaches or parents who catch the pageant bug. It can be an extraordinarily circular world, in which someone may coach one competitor, be the parent of another and run the pageant itself.
Although every pageant is different, they usually fall into two categories: “Southern” or “Northern.”
The term no longer carries the strict geographic definition it once did, but most Southern pageants take place below the Mason-Dixon line. Most Midwestern pageants are considered “Northern,” or more conservative.
Southern pageants charge big fees–$800 or more is not uncommon. They offer big prizes–cars, trips, $10,000 in cash. And they expect flashy clothes and big hair, usually professionally styled at $300 for a weekend.
If you don’t have big hair, you borrow it. One 13-year-old Downstate competitor recalls seeing infants wearing little wigs in a Southern pageant.
Although those in the pageant industry are loath to publicly criticize JonBenet’s family, privately they say the little girl’s “look” represented the most exaggerated form of the Southern style.
The current Little Miss Windy City, Tiffany McCallen, looks like a typical 10-year-old, with shoulder-length brown hair and jeans. Like many 5th graders, she overuses the word “like,” which belies any accusation that she might be an overtrained puppet or, as insiders say, a “Patty Pageant.”
Ask her about a pageant–and she has competed in more than 70–and Tiffany is as likely to talk about her new friend from Washington state as her title.
Ask her why she competes, and she says, “It’s fun. Like, I get to make new friends. I especially like it when there’s an interview.”
Helping children develop self-confidence and poise are the reasons parents most often cite for entering their children in pageants.
At age 3, Savannah Emmrich doesn’t know if she has won or lost when she competes in a pageant, says her mother, Ann Emmrich of Darien.
But she is becoming less shy, and Emmrich thinks pageants are the reason. As for the costumes and makeup, Emmrich, a former model herself, says, shaking her head, “It’s like dress-up. Didn’t you like to play dress-up?”
The contention by some pageant officials that they look beyond appearance may sound saccharine, but Joline Todd of Morrison, Ill., has found it to be true. Her 6-year-old daughter, Charlotte, won a title in the Young American Miss International state pageant in May despite visible scars on her face from a severe dog bite.
Although they are sensitive to the public’s often-critical view of their world, pageant parents themselves talk about its ugly side.
Tales of vicious competition are common. Lisa Stapleton of Granite City, Ill., whose daughter competes, has seen mothers punish a child who doesn’t win.
“They say, `You’re not going to get that toy now,’ ” she said.
Then there are the cost and the potential for fraud in an unregulated industry.
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A competition, for example, may post a $400 entry fee, but contestants must also sign up for a dozen or more “optional” categories if they want to win the overall title.
“When you get done paying all these optionals, then there’s the hotel, the processing fee. People end up getting home and saying, `We spent over $4,000, and what did we get?’ ” said Bob Marshall, with the International Federation of Pageant Production Associates, an industry association in Elida, Ohio. “This is the part that kills pageants.”
No wonder that in an advertisement in Babette’s Pageant and Talent Gazette, a children’s pageant magazine, one 10-year-old wrote: “Nana and Papa–thanks for spending all of your money on me.”
The advertisement, according to the magazine’s chart, cost $200.
Although grandparents and parents can spend more than $3,000 on a dress or on photographs, children’s pageants are not typically a pursuit of families as wealthy as that of JonBenet, whose father runs a billion-dollar computer company.
On the contrary, it is a markedly middle-class and blue-collar hobby, according to Michael Marsden, dean of arts and sciences at Northern Michigan University and a popular culture expert who has researched pageants.
“It’s a democratic coming-out party,” he said.
Pageant criticism carries a distinct whiff of snobbery, Marsden said, often coming from upper-middle-class professionals whose children enjoy a plethora of advantages.
The sultry little girl look, however, is as disturbing to some inside the pageant world as those outside it.
“As a judge, when I’m judging a children’s pageant, very often I get embarrassed because I feel I’m at burlesque theater for children,” said Barbara Kelley, Miss Virginia 1958, who now works as a pageant coach and judge in Atlanta. “The routines are full of bumps and grinds.”
The routines are part of what’s called “pro-am modeling,” in which the young contestants demonstrate various items of clothing, including swimsuits.
The judges blame the parents and the coaches. The parents and the coaches blame the judges for awarding prizes to girls who perform the sexiest routines.
In an attempt to curtail the trend, some pageants, like Young American Miss, based in Bryan, Ohio, have instituted a formal “no glitz” rule. Director Nanci Frazer instituted the ban after parents ignored her pleas to forgo rhinestones and sequins, she said.
“If they have them, they get points off,” Frazer said.
To outsiders, the distinctions between glitz and no glitz may seem slim, considering that most contests still judge young girls upon their looks. At one Southern pageant, in fact, the “interview” consists of looking closely at a girl’s face.
She has never seen a children’s pageant, but Mary Pipher, a therapist and author of “Reviving Ophelia,” said the competitiveness and underlying messages of such an event concern her.
“Of all the possible ways to support their daughter and encourage her development and self-esteem, is this the best?” Pipher asked.
Although pageant directors fear that the current criticism will cause some sponsors to drop out of pageants, it is unlikely to stop many parents from entering their children.
Ultimately, they believe pageants are a good activity for their children.
Ariel’s mother, Sherri Kerby, points out that her daughter has entered an advanced reading class since she began competing and that she is a leader among her classmates and the first to volunteer to try new things.
“Ariel has become a totally different child due to doing pageants,” she said. “She just loves anything to do with being in the limelight, whereas before she would not let go of my leg to play in the playground.
“It’s brought her into a whole new world.”