{"id":18932,"date":"2015-06-05T09:27:09","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T14:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=18932"},"modified":"2015-06-04T11:22:51","modified_gmt":"2015-06-04T16:22:51","slug":"child-pageants-and-the-performance-of-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/06\/05\/child-pageants-and-the-performance-of-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Child Pageants and the Performance of Gender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many sociologists argue that gender, as we know it, is not innate, but put on and performed. Certain moments of our lives, like weddings and quincea\u00f1eras, are opportunities to really emphasize femininity and masculinity; but gender is also performed in mundane ways every day in the ways that we talk, move, dress, and adorn ourselves.<\/p>\n

These photographs of child beauty pageant participants, taken by Susan Anderson and published in her book High Glitz<\/a>,<\/em> illustrate how much of feminine sexual allure is put on and performed.\u00a0 These kids are adultified with make-up and they also often wear false teeth and hair extensions. You can browse additional images at Powerhouse Books<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"HighGlitz_Jacket_060209\"<\/p>\n

People often object to this sort of adornment on a child being unnatural, but when adult women use these same strategies — fake eyelashes, makeup, veneers, and hair extensions — it is no more natural. Adult women are, no less than those kids, performing femininity.<\/p>\n

To take it one step further, as The Spinster Aunt<\/a> does, if you react to the idea of child beauty pageants with horror, then than horror should be applied to the project of femininity itself, not just the fact that children are participants:<\/p>\n

I submit that anyone who is uncomfortable with [the] Little Miss Perfect [pageant] is ethically obliged to be just as uncomfortable with femininity in general. Little Miss Perfect is merely one of a gazillion equally nauseating points on the Porno-Feminine Continuum within which all female citizens of the globe are confined by a culture of oppression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, if it’s troubling when girls do it (and, for that matter, also troubling to many when men do it), then why isn’t it troubling when women do it?<\/p>\n

Originally posted in 2010.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. Many sociologists argue that gender, as we know it, is not innate, but put on and performed. Certain moments of our lives, like weddings and quincea\u00f1eras, are opportunities to really emphasize femininity and masculinity; but gender is also performed in mundane ways every day in the ways that we talk, move, dress, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":66938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,218,251,225,55,2089,2103,2099,23677,2096],"class_list":["post-18932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-bodies","tag-hair","tag-clothesfashion","tag-gender","tag-gender-beauty","tag-gender-bodies","tag-gender-childrenyouth","tag-gender-doing-gender","tag-gender-femininity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2010\/01\/1c.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18932"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67096,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18932\/revisions\/67096"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}