We All Should Care

Accept the call for a deeper purpose.

There are many reasons why I should write this post, and I know there are going to be an equal amount of people who agree and disagree with all that I’m about to say. In a basic statement: Children should not be objectified and put into beauty pageants so young.

I don’t have an issue with Miss America, Miss Universe and not even so much an issue with Miss Teen USA. All of the ladies that enter those contests are more than able to make up their mind and do as they choose, however, these children that are 3 and 4 years old that are getting shoved into beauty pageants do not have a say.

There are many shows on television devoted to following around pageant moms and their “trophy babies” during competition. Some of the children complain and cry about doing these events and some of them, I feel, have been so brainwashed by their parents that they actually believe at 4 years old that this is what they want to do. I am willing to bet that if you gave these young women the opportunity to play with a brand new Barbie doll or to get fitted for a new dress, they would choose the doll. The parents of these children are taking away their childhood.

These children enter several competitions a year and when you’re busy coming up with new baton routines for your showcase, when is there time to draw, play with sidewalk chalk, do cartwheels with your friends or learn to play with your imagination? There isn’t. So these children rush through their childhood. Not to mention, all the while they’re rushing they’re learning that in the world beauty is on the outside and that they will forever be judged by their looks. What an awful thing to imprint on a child at such an impressionable age. They are preparing them for an unrealistic world where everyone is beautiful and if you’re not? You lose.

Objectifying these small children and making them look far too adult for their innocent age. Caking on makeup on their delicate skin. Screaming at them to get them to stand still and smile. Stealing their childhood from them just so they can have a few trophies and crowns and grow up to be an anorexic teenager with self esteem issues… that’s not what we should teach our children. That’s not the kind of goals we should have for our daughters. Of course we want them to be beautiful, but we want them to know that beauty comes within, that everyone has something beautiful about them. We want them to be intelligent and creative. We should want them to have their own dreams and goals they want to achieve.

I leave you with a quote from Gia, a 1980’s supermodel. “I ain’t good at this. And even if you are good at this, what exactly are you good at?”

[[image courtesy of google.com/images]]

What is a star? What is fame really? A self-indulgent lifestyle propelled by the media hungry America? No, I shouldn’t only blame America… fueled by the celebrity starved world.

I used to want to be a “star”, whatever that means. I was actually so close that I tasted it. It tasted like blood, that bitter taste that makes you thirsty for ice-cold water when it hits your tongue. I quickly backed away and have since only glanced backward once or twice. I don’t regret that I left my record label to basically be forced to start back from the beginning because I was being made into a product. I was told that I was no longer a human, I was a machine. I was told when to be where and how to be when I got there. I was told that I couldn’t cut my hair, that I had to be platinum blond and that anything I should have to say, I should say it in verse and with super catchy lyrics surrounding it. I was told that I could no longer be “Jodie” and that I was now “Jodie Platz” a product that was molded around my name and I had absolutely no opinion whatsoever into what went into this product that was for sale.

So then why do people crave fame? What is it that makes everyone want to be on the cover of the magazines? Don’t they see Robert Pattinson and how his anxiety about the entire situation is tearing him apart? Or maybe they don’t see the downward spiral that the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears have been through? Why do they still want it after everything they see?

People will do anything for fame and money. People would go and be on a television show, objectifying themselves even if they didn’t get paid. I suppose there’s always the chance that if they are on the Real World or even maybe Jerry Springer that someone, somewhere will discover them and they’ll be the next big thing. However, how often does that really happen? Now you’ve gone on national television and have humiliated yourself in front of your friends and family for them to forever replay your threesome in the hot tub or your temper-tantrum on YouTube and TiVo. I don’t know about you, but my family already has enough reasons to laugh at me, I don’t need to hand them any more.

They do it for attention of course, and we happily oblige and give them the attention they want. We put these stars on pedestals so high that they’re untouchable to us. We look at them and see the perfection that surrounds their lives. The iced out watches, the Louis Vuitton luggage, the free clothes, limousines and cocktails around the clock… we see that and we want it, but it’s not real. The price of those things is too high. Nothing is really free to them because they sold themselves to be a machine. Inside those limo’s with the cocktails they’re sad inside. They’re drowning their sorrows in their champagne and telling themselves they should be grateful and thankful because they were dreaming of this since they were twelve years old. Just remember one simple rule of thumb; the higher the pedestal the harder they fall.

[[image courtesy of google.com/images]]