Toddlers And Tiaras Essays Examples

For many years, beauty pageant became a part of communities all over the world. Also, they became obsessions to some parents, who think that these contests are appropriate for their kids. Some of them do not understand that with a decision to enroll a child for a pageant they kill their childhood forcing them to acts like an adult. Toddlers and Tiaras is an American reality TV show created to present kids, aged from 5 years and older, as adult models. The series show makes children act and behave in way that is inappropriate for their early age. For example, their way in dressing, putting makeup and comb their hair. It is about children pageants, and makes a competition between the toddlers and their parents, with a precious prize for the winner.
As a sociolinguistics student, I am going to analyze the kids' language behavior phenomena, which are evident in this show, by applying the preferential gender differences. It implies the different light, which distinguishes male and female speakers', and linguistics features, which are constitutive and reflexive. Sociolinguists define ‘constitutive’ as group of people that create or make their own language and its variations that they want to speak in. It happens not because their fact of being male or female, but because of their desire to constitute themselves as the examples of maleness or femaleness with the help of language and making up that variant as a code of their identity. The term ‘reflexive’ is defined by sociologists as the social category that is reflected in speakers' way of talking. So, when the speakers understand the variation of the language, they can be seen as a mirror that reflects other speaker’s social categories, and also use these categories to define their own identities and gender.
As a constitutive the kids, who participate in Toddlers and Tiara show, constituted themselves by interacting with adults and used the same linguistics features the adult did. Furthermore, all of the competitor kids and their parents, the judges and the producer of the TV show were speaking the same way, using the same tone of voice and the same terms. The examples of the terms they used are: ‘pretty’, ‘princess’, ‘beautiful’, ‘good’, ‘great’, and ‘pageants’. However, girls in the TV show used a way of speech that differentiates them from other little girls. Because the ways they speak make them act and talk like pageant girls do. For instance, the competitor Elizabeth said: “My personality is way over the top.” That is exactly the way they are treated there. Also the 5 year-old competitor Kylie said: “In the beauty I did well but not perfect.” with the manner of talking that does not suite for a girl of her age. Although, TV show creates and makes the language for pageants girl with the purpose to create a different group identity. This is what they do – act and speak different than any other girls of the same age. For instance, the kids imitate the language their parents and the producer of this TV show use, even the intonation is just the same. For example, the competitor Elizabeth’s voice while describing the event with the words “It is so amazing” was similar to her grandmother’s manner of speaking. By imitating adult’s little girls showed their desire to be distinguished as a part of this group. They were acting in such a way in order to be identified as pageants girls and adults by their opponents, jury of the show and the audience.
As a reflexive category, those kids were a reflected mirror to the people around them, who got passion in this field. That was clear in their way of interacting with other adults or each time they were talking about themselves. So, their behavior was a reflection to adult’s behavior.
For example, the competitor Kylie said: “I'm going to buy dinner because winner buys dinner.” It is just a reflection of what she used to hear from her parents or another adult. The way the little girls speak, use the terms ‘beauty’, ‘act’, ‘smile’, and behave was to make them adjust to what they found themselves in. Even more, how they were speaking in the interview.
It should be mentioned that the atmosphere and interior of the places little pageant girls live in is different from any other kid and reflect in the manner they speak and act. Pageant competitors were surrounded by dresses, makeup, hair trophies, tiaras, wigs which is main reasons to reflect in their way of speech. All in all, the parents still remain the main source of the influence on their children. For example, everyone was calling the competitor Elizabeth ‘little princess’ the producer, the grandmother, the judges, which taught her to act and behave as princess. When the parents call their daughter ‘my little princess’, it reflect in the way the child speaks and behaves. However, this also reflects in the audience of the TV show and in the identity of little girls. So, they will be just identified as girls or pageant girls if these reflect in their way of speech.