You have probably heard of Sheena Upton, the California mom who claimed to inject her eight-year-old daughter, Britney, with botox to improve her chances of winning a beauty pageant.
After child protective services took her girl away to investigate the case, Upton claimed she fabricated the entire story for compensation. She was in fact paid $200 to hold a syringe with a clear liquid, and in her video stated that she didn’t even know what botox was.
So why is there a video of her injecting her daughter with a syringe? And why did Upton justify this by claiming that other moms give botox treatments to their daughters in order to play the tough beauty pageant game?
In one of the interviews which you can view here, her daughter said, “I just, like, don’t think wrinkles are nice on little girls.” She also said that it “hurts,” and that her mother also waxed the hairs off her legs and when asked why, Britney answered, “It’s not ladylike to have hair.”
The concern is how this will impact Britney psychologically, as well as any other girls who are going through the same loss of innocence.
I find it so depressing to hear about all the pressures girls seem to be going through today, especially after hearing Britney say that she puts up with the pain of botox injections to look “beautiful and pretty.” I am deeply saddened, as are most mothers and grandmothers. I wrote a previous article on what is considered a beautiful woman in different countries around the world which sparked several comments.
This topic relates to a book I am reading, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, Dispatches From the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture by Peggy Orenstein, where she states, “According to a 2006 survey of more than two thousand school-aged children, girls repeatedly described a paralyzing pressure to be ‘perfect’: not only to get straight As and be the student body president, editor of the newspaper, and captain of the swim team but also to be ‘kind and caring,’ ‘please everyone, be very thin, and dress right.’ …They now feel they must not only ‘have it all’ but be it all: Cinderella and Supergirl. Agressive and agreeable. Smart and stunning. Does that make them the beneficiaries of new opportunities or victims of a massive con job?”
Orenstein then continues, “It is as if the more girls achieve the more obsessed they become with appearance–not dissimilar to the way the ideal of the ‘good mother’ was ratcheted up just as adult women flooded the workforce.”
So where are girls and women heading in the next ten-twenty years? Any thoughts on this topic are welcome. I’m particularly interested in what men think?
I think this articles highlights the worst of the way girls are viewed… for me, it's a very American thing to hold beauty pageants for kids. The problem starts right there – judging kids on the way they look. No wonder we are seeing extremes.
We need to build up children's confidence and self-worth – and help them see the beauty inside themselves…
Thank you for writing this. Many years ago, I faced a situation with a man who was wrongly accused for rape. Only then did it really dawn on me that women really don't help themselves, especially the young ones, because they want to look grown up too fast.
Articles like this is so helpful.
I hope you can let us feature it on our site as it would be really great to have something like this posted.
Also, I sincerely think you would enjoy our community of women as they truly like to connect and are very responsive to what you write.
Please come and visit us at voiceboks.com
Sincerely,
Lexie Lane
http://www.voiceboks.com
Oh Sonia, you must have been in my head this morning. I'm working on a post about the men who continue to believe women are sex objects for them to use and abuse.
You've hit on a very good reason why this continues to proliferate… mothers who feel 'less than' who project their insecurities onto their daughters in a very negative way.
I worked in the modeling business many years ago and I also owned an agency. I refused to get involved in the pageant biz no matter what the age group was. The entire pageant world is like an alien planet.
It infuriates me when I see mothers push their daughters into that world. I could count on one hand, in all the years I was in the modeling business, the number of girls who truly wanted to compete in pageants. It is the most unnatural world you can imagine.
See… now you got me started. I'm going to finish my post and link to yours. They'll be similar and I think we need to really make this point and start a conversation.
Thanks!
b
I think it would be helpful to understand how girls and women are viewed around the world. Our western culture seems to go overboard about being perfect, thin, with no wrinkles. A very happy culture, it seemed to me, is the South Pacific Islanders. They value large frames and curves as healthy. Their dances are feminine and sensous, but very artistic and beautiful. I talk about this in SAILING THE SOUTH PACIFIC, the book I am currently writing.
@ladyfi
I agree with you, but don't you think things are changing in the U.K. This botox thing was first published in the Sun in March 2011.
@Lexie Lane
I checked your site and would love to have my post featured since it would fit with your audience. Thanks for contacting me and I noticed you live not too far from me.
It's awful isn't it? Let children be children. Don't rush them into growing up too fast, especially girls. Here in rural France we're well away from such pressures on the whole. Kids are healthy and happy and not beauty queens. However, there is some pressure on academic achievement. One of my daughter's friend, an only child, a girl, is coached incessantly out of school so she gets better grades. She's bright already. Parents can sometimes try to fulfil their own amibtions through their children, and that's not on.
To some degree it's just an effect of a society that's geared towards consumerism. The media is always trying to sell you something, and if you don't need it than it's their job to convince you that you do need it. So new ideals are created for the sole purpose of selling things. Unfortunately images get sold along with those products, and they last long after the product is discarded.
Men suffer from it too, but in different ways and not exactly to the same extreme.
@Barbara
I cannot imagine what it must be like in the pageant world although I've seen clips and movies about it. Since you were in the modeling business, I just want to stress that I don't have a problem with women having cosmetic procedures when they are mature adults and they want it. I do have a problem when it's imposed on kids because parents think their kids need it.
I just wrote a short blog post on this topic! My feeling is more from the standpoint of parenthood. You are correct, the image aspect of what we as parents are interjecting on our children psyche needs to be taken very seriously. My qualm is whether these individuals SHOULD be parents! Whether she lied or not is irrelevant. She used her daughter either way for her gain. How's that for love!?
Spoken by a mother with two grown daughters.
http://www.the8tabootruths.com
Hadn't heard that the mother retracted. Will be interested to see what Fox News says, since O'Reilly was all over this story.
Sometime ago I saw a movie from a book called "Brats". One interessting point was the self esteem of middle school military dependents by gender. The boys felt great about themselves, and their role models were always there to throw or catch a ball and encourge them to excel. The girls had low esteem, ostensibly because the female wives were either great beauties and socialites or introverts. Of course now that half the military is female, it would be intersting to test that theory.
Great, thought-provoking blog!
The youth obsession is a tragic American phenomenon.
Beauty fades, dumb is forever.
Sunny greetings from Italy!
What a great article! As a woman who has struggled with body image issues in my late teens and twenties I defintely think things have not changed much. The beauty that is being exhalted is the type of beauty that Madison Avenue has told us. I think as a mom to a girl I have to work hard on accepting my own beauty so that when I tell her that beauty is within as much as out she will see me as a role model and not just another contradiction in terms. Thanks for making me think. I found you on Voiceboks. I hope you join the community, it has been a great place to find wonderful blogs such as yours.
@Lois Joy
I know when we lived in Belize, and when I travel to Europe, countries value different things. The French like women with personality and charm, which does not mean the "perfect" doll look.
@Stephanie
I think it's good for kids to grow up playing and being kids. Your children are lucky to be in rural France with farm animals and adventure everyday.
@D. Nathan
Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment. I am interested in hearing more about "Men suffer from it too, but in different ways."
@Catherine
Just came over to read what you had to say. Yes, we both agree. Thanks for visiting.
@Doctor Eclectic
You brought up an interesting post too, especially about women in the military. I wonder if there are any studies on that.
@Antares
Great comment and Peter Harrison from Australia, agrees with it on my FB page.
Hi! Just stopped by from voiceBoks!
I'm a follower!
Please feel free to visit Always Just a Mom http://www.alwaysjustamom.blogspot.com
Have a great day!
UGH — What a truly disgusting mother! I can almost see the steam coming out of my ears when I see these types (and those stage moms) of women in the news.
I can only say how grateful I was to have a mom and a best friend for 40-something years.
Kudos to the REAL moms out there – the moms who love their children unconditionally (which, I'm sure, any of you reading this post is a member of if you have kids of your own).
Great post, Sonia, on an explosive subject. This only highlights further the American culture's emphasis on physical appearance especially among girls. I find the very fact that there are little girl beauty pageants disgusting and harmful to both contestants and non-contestants alike. Blame the mothers and their "my daughter is prettier than yours" attitude.
That said, my American mother used to tell me, "You have to suffer to be beautiful." Since I didn't want to suffer, I'd pray that I'd never be beautiful.
Do you have a direct link to your page?
Quit facebook a while back, but would be interesting to see that discussion.
@Antares
I have copied and pasted it into a word doc. for you, but need your e-mail address to send it to you. Couldn't find it. Mine is:
agutsywriter@gmail.com, if you want to contact me, I shall send the attached comments to you.
Sonia
@ALL
Barbara, from http://zeroto60andbeyond.blogspot.com
used to work in the fashion and modeling world and has posted a very interesting post about this subject too, which I think you may want to visit.
Hello..welcome to Voiceboks! I like your articles.. will follow you to come back for more..
I couldn't imagine injecting botox into my childs wrinkles anymore that I could imagine injecting one of my own billion wrinkles. This is such a messed up world if this is an okay thing to do in certain circles. Yikes.