Posted on 08/21/2006 2:58:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
IN THESE polarised and war-weary times, it’s good to know that Americans can agree on one thing: John Ramsey is a total creep.
Ramsey is the 63-year-old software entrepreneur whose daughter, JonBenet Ramsey, was beaten and strangled to death in her own home ten years ago. Although neither John nor his wife Pasty were ever charged, he was widely blamed for JonBenet’s killing — and continues to be, even after the death of Patsy from ovarian cancer and last week’s arrest of the teacher John Karr, a child-porn connoisseur who claims that he broke into the Ramseys’ home and murdered the six-year-old (the possibly delusional Karr was extradited from Thailand yesterday, allowing the New York Post to run a front-page photograph of Karr in business class, alongside the headline: “Snake on a Plane”).
Given Karr’s confession — and the lack of any hard evidence against the Ramseys — why does the girl’s father continue to be vilified? Because the businessman, whose late wife was a former Miss West Virginia, allowed his daughter to be trussed up like a call girl and paraded around kiddie-pageants — collecting such titles as Little Miss Merry Christmas, Little Miss Sunburst, and, my favourite, National Tiny Miss Beauty.
What father, tub-thumped the US public, could possibly allow his daughter to be sexualised in this way and displayed for the complicated pleasure of adults? Indeed, the latest development in the JonBenet case has given everyone a new excuse to get all moralistic about such violations of childhood.
Take The New York Times, which on Sunday dedicated its front page to a story about child modelling agencies that publish suggestive online photographs of pre-teens. Read the intro: “The model is shown rising out of a bubble bath, suds dripping from her body. Her tight panties and skimpy top are soaked and revealing . . . The model’s name is Sparkle. She is — at most — nine years old.”
I’m not going to argue that this isn’t deeply unsettling. But it seems only fair to point out that America has developed an astonishing set of double standards on the issue of child exploitation.
Consider America’s Got Talent, the Simon Cowell talent contest that became a huge hit in America over the summer months. Cowell’s show was one long creep-out of novelty kiddie acts, including an 11-year-old yodeller, a 12-year-old harmonica player and, inevitably, an 11-year-old soul diva whose star turn was the Janis Joplin track Piece of My Heart (sample lyric: Didn’t I make you feel like you were the only man, yeah?/ An’ didn’t I give you nearly everything that a woman possibly can?).
Little Miss Joplin ultimately won the wholesome $1 million prize money, and now has Michael Jackson’s adulthood to look forward to.
As for the harmonica player, no one could have cared less when it emerged that he had a “day job” at the topless variety show Buck Wild at the Sahara Hotel in Vegas.
So — let’s get this straight — JonBenet’s pageants were wrong, but a 12-year-old in a strip joint is fine?
And what about the recent boom in slick and sexy marketing to children by corporations? This is apparently fine also.
Indeed, The Los Angeles Times recently ran a five-part series on American tweens (pre-teens), written from a Hollywood marketer’s perspective. The tween demographic (as children are now known) is now responsible for up to $59 billion of discretionary spending every year — whether it’s iPods, kiddie spa treatments or Disneyland holidays. The desire to grab some of this cash appears to have entirely overtaken any desire to protect children from an onslaught of precision-targeted consumerism.
And because the best way to sell things to children is to use other children — who also, in an ideal world, appeal to parents — American popular culture is now saturated by such fare as America’s Got Talent, Radio Disney, Tweenstock (Disney’s music festival) and teen stars such as the Olsen twins, who will be billionaires before they reach drinking age.
In light of all this, America should give John Ramsey a break. Sure, he was a creep in 1996. But can anyone seriously get upset about the dubious taste of the National Tiny Miss Beauty pageant now?
Let’s face it: times have changed. The creep-o-meter needs to be recalibrated.
Her mama was a southern gal. It's a southern thing. I knew girls who's mother dyed their hair in grade-school. No one thinks it's odd in the south.
Why? You answered the question....to look like women, to play practice being grown up. In the context of play, it has no more consequence than little girls pretending to be mommies.
Why do we insist that little girls in pagents look like women instead of little girls? They ARE little girls. There is probably some merit to putting make-up on a child in order for faces to be seem in harsh lighting (just as it is perfectly acceptable for the occasional school play). But the whole package is very, very adult (the hair, the clothes, the gestures, the walk, etc.)
Right or wrong, that's the entire point of being a "Little Miss" anything.
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