It's like watching a train wreck (or watching My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding.) Your eyes bug out and your mouth drops open because you can't believe what you are seeing.
More like a scale-model staging of a train wreck. Most of this garbage isn't for real. And even when it is there's a lot of hamming for the cameras. The hope is that they'll become famous and perhaps have a career in show business.
The sad thing is that I know people who are actually involved in stuff like this. One of my employees got herself suckered into the Mrs. Wisconsin contest about 15 years ago. She was already Mrs. South Milwaukee. What a racket, and you should have seen the amount of money she spent competing.
A former business partner’s wife is deeply involved in the Jr. Miss and Miss Arkansas Teen pageants with 2 of her granddaughters. It’s a whole way of life. IMHO, a sick way of life, but it is not for me to judge.
Another employee got suckered into a most beautiful baby contest about 10 years ago where she had to buy very expensive portfolios of pictures of her 1 year old to get her “modeling” jobs. She played along for about 3 years and never got her kid a job, as far as I know.
The most that can be said in favor of this is that the young woman learns comfort in front of an audience which might help her in later life. But, I’d rather see a kid take tennis or piano lessons.