Baby Picture Cuteness Contests: Recipe for Failure

     

I know why parents enter their kids in beauty pageants, and it’s weird.  I’m not alone in that feeling; most people consider little kid beauty pageants to be over the top wrong.  Almost equally quixotic and wrong though are baby picture cuteness contests where parents submit baby pictures for judging online or by a sponsoring corporation.  Either way, beauty pageant or photo contest, the message is clear.  “My kid is cuter or more beautiful than yours.”  Doesn’t every parent think her kid is the cutest?  I think my kids are cuter than yours.  I suppose they might be, but if it’s true how would I know?  I’m biased.  Even if every 90 of 100 people think your kid is more adorable, I’ll just think the world has lost its senses and I, and 1 out of every other 10 people, are the only sane ones left.  That’s how it works.  Nothing anybody can say is going to convince me that my kid isn’t the best kid in the world.  A contest doesn’t validate that opinion.  And even if it did, would anybody else change their minds, thereby making the contest worthwhile?  Would other parents concede that the winning kid is cuter?  “Oh, well, since we had this Gymboree sponsored contest, and your kid won – you must be right.  I concede your kid is better than mine.” No!  That’s stupid; that isn’t going to happen.  It’s only the irrelevant opinion of the winning parents that get reinforced while everybody else becomes staunchly opposed to the outcome.   If the mom (or in rare cases the dad) thinks she’s so awesome, why doesn’t she enter herself into a beauty contest instead of entering her kid?  Oh, right… .                

What’s in it For You?                

Are you doing it for a reward?  Will you get a year’s worth of macaroni and cheese or a coupon at Toys R Us?  It’s your prerogative, but I still think a reward is not a good reason to forcibly enter someone else in a beauty contest.  I think motherly pride is the more likely reason kids get entered into these contests, not gifts or gift cards.  Sure, some tangible thing might also be at stake, but the real payoff is pride.  If your kid is a baby, he won’t care if he wins (or loses).  That means the one who prospers by victory is not the contestant but the contestant’s sponsors, the parent — you.  And the only thing you’ll win is something you should have already had in the first place, the belief that your kid is cutest.  Nothing changed, so what’s the point?  And what if your kid is older, say 4 or 5?  If he wins, you’ll be excited, and he’ll understand your excitement to mean it’s more important that he’s cute than, say, likeable or some other real measure of a person.  What’s that say about his self image?  Do you want it wrapped up in his looks?  And what happens when his body changes and he’s not small and adorable anymore?  The only one, then, who stands to gain (albeit a pointless gain) is the parent, and the only one who stands to lose is the kid.  A contest’s risk and reward should be for the benefit or detriment of the contestant, not someone who isn’t competing.                

And if he Loses?                

What if your kid is 3, 4 or 5 years old (not a baby), and he finds out he lost a contest he didn’t want to enter in the first place and which no degree of skill or effort on his part could have helped anyway?  It means you just advertised his inferiority (which isn’t inferiority at all) at something he has no control over and wouldn’t have cared about anyway had you not brought it up.  These are not dolls that you’re judging, these are people who have no interest in participating but who don’t have a choice.  I have no problem with the Miss America pageant (and others like it) because all the contestants know what they’ve gotten into.  Someone will lose, there’ll be some crying and other beauty contest nonsense, and someone will have the honor of opening bridges and Burger Kings for a year before it’s time to stop opening bridges and Burger Kings to let someone else have a turn.                  

Injustice:                  

Would you consider it a miscarriage of justice (even a little unjust) if your kid were to lose?  Of course, because you wouldn’t enter a subjective contest like that in the first place unless you sincerely believe your kid is a winner.  When your kid loses, and he probably will, you’ll be grumpy because you’ll think the judging was rigged or something else unforeseen prevented the execution of justice.  The last thing you’ll think is that your kid didn’t deserve to win.  Look at it this way: if your kid loses a track race, well — the times tell the story.  But if he loses at a cuteness contest?  Well, there’s no evidence you were ever misguided — only the suspicion that something is rotten in Denmark.  There is an axiom in life that goes something like this:  Nothing external can penetrate the recesses of your mind unless you allow it.  Your interactions with those around you are irrelevant to your nature unless you allow them to become relevant.  Therefore, a beauty contest is nothing more than an admission that your mind is shaped not by your rational nature, but by the whims of others.  Your kid is just as cute and precious to you right now as he will be with the praises of a million admirers.  Is it the million who matter or the truth you know right now?