Whilst in theory, baby and child beauty pageants are cute and harmless, some parents believing it to be a fun way of creating pleasant memories and bringing themselves closer to their children. In reality, I believe it to be more of a thoughtless vicariousness. Although the child may be having fun and enjoying the attention, their basis to judge from is more likely skewed then not.
Child pageantry in and of itself is not wrong or particularly evil, any more than junk food. It is the extreme in which an individual goes, making the difference in dress-up or good diet.
In my opinion, programs highlighting these pageants for any reason other than to bring their demonstrability to the attention of the public should not be viewed. I also would recommend all parents read “Conversations With a Pedophile: In the Interest of our Children” by Amy Hammel-Zabin, an extraordinary book providing insight into the mind of a pedophile. http://www.amazon.com/Conversations-Pedophile-Interest-our-Children/dp/1569802475 However, I would not advocate disallowing pageants or there broadcast. Doing so would venture onto grounds of policing ones intent, “hate crimes” law comes to mind. A more appropriate method would be a general public disapproval and ridicule of the extreme, as is being done here.
In closing, I must take exception to my understanding Goodwill’s analysis in the comments area. He seems to believe that Ayn Rand and the philosophy of Objectivism provide some excuse or reason for being a pedophile. This could not be further from the truth and demonstrates and profound lack of understanding in regards to Self Interest (selfishness), Objectivism and Values. A parents exploitation of their child, as discussed here, is destructive and by definition not objectively in their self interest. Lindsey Lovehands, off the cuff, commentary is immensely more accurate and shows a more thoughtful scrutiny.
Frank
15 Responses
Your understanding of my analysis is entirely incorrect. I agree entirely with the analysis of self-interest you provided, however you failed to rebut mine by doing so since you did not address what I implied. You addressed not only an argument I did not make, but a topic entirely different than the one I raised. The fact that the first thing that comes to your mind, and out of your mouth, whenever Ayn Rand is brought up are her ethical positions shows that you have a superficial understanding of Objectivism. Even if you are able to remember some of the distinctions she made in regards to ethics, you do not actually understand them since you do not understand their epistemological and metaphysical underpinnings. That is why you did not understand my comment.
Allow me to explain it in plain language:
The purpose of my comment was to criticize the person of Mike South. While, in Atlas Shrugged itself, the passage from John Galt’s speech that I quoted addresses the psychological effects of the decision to adopt altruism as the standard by which to gauge one’s self worth, since the effects are the same, it is applicable to the irrational standard Mike has adopted as well. Just as the real reason why murderers locked up in prison go out of their way to make life more miserable for child molestors is to hide from themselves their own irredeemable evil, the purpose of Mike’s identification of child pagentry as pedophilia was not to bring attention to this (alleged) fact, but rather to make himself feel better about his own involvement in pornography. Just as an altruist, faced with personal failure, says to himself “at least I’m not selfish” to denounce those who beat him, Mike has adopted the standard of “as least I’m not as bad as those guys” in order to hide from himself the nature of what it is that he does.
Instead of realizing that while child pagentry certainly may have negative affects on the girls who participate in them, and certainly may be a step in what leads to pedophilia, he writes the entire practice off as “nothing more than pedophilia” – as if it’s exactly the same. The reason for coming to this conclusion is to leave in his mind the following impression: that because some adults might be involved with these pagents for sexual reasons, all adults involved with them must be; and that if a pornographer such as himself can see pedophilia where no one else can, then pornography is a healthy outlet for adults – sparing them the sexually repressed state which can create an interest in children. That was his purpose in writing that post, and it is exactly the same sort of thing a murderer tells himself before he plunges a prison shank into the chest of a pedophile. He thinks that what he is doing proves he is braver, and with a more disciplined sense of justice, than anyone on the outside.
Similarly, in order to hide from himself the fact that he has chosen exploit the segment which actually is, whenever Mike South looks at mainstream entertainment he needs to believe that it is motivated by inappropriate sexual desires. If he can convince himself that everyone who chooses not to live a lifestyle similar to his secretly wants to, and if they would only lighten up they would be able to, then the (alleged) tendency of people to sexualize things which they shouldn’t has nothing to with repeated exposure to products like his. Does this mean that he is responsible for pedophilia? Of course not. Not any more than a run of the mill murderer is responsible for child molestation. All it means is that there is a connection between deviating from a healthy sexual identity into pornography and engaging in pedophilia. They are two points on a continuum – just as murder and child molestation are two stops on the continuum of deviation from a healthy moral identity. But it is a connection Mike is unlikely to see. As heavily invested in pornography as he is, instead of chosing to actually trace the causes of “pedophilic” child pagents, he will continue to obscure from himself behind the comforting mantra of “I may be a pornographer, but at least I’m not a child pornographer like those freaks at the TLC channel” by writing posts such as the one he did.
I stand soundly corrected. Your analysis is in fact the more thoughtful scrutiny of the posting.
Only a middle aged man riding a scooter, while wearing a helmet with flames could find fault.
Goodwill,
As educated and well-read as your rhetoric may sound, I have a little trouble with your reasoning. I think first and foremost is the fact that you seem to have performed a complete analysis of Mike South’s motivation without having a personal interview with him. Having known South for several years and spending countless hours conversing with him on probably every topic possible, I have to adamantly disagree with your conclusion. The example of the criminal thinking himself better than the worse criminal (“at least I’m not as bad as…”) is certainly a valid principal. However, to reach that mentality requires some degree of guilt and self-loathing. I think anyone who’s known South personally for any length of time would agree that these are not his personality traits.
So now I have two questions.
First, what motivates a seemingly well-educated person to lurk around a website or industry that he obviously views as disgusting and tasteless only to try cause conflict and attempt to degrade others?
and the really BIG question…
What sort of deviant behavior do you enjoy that causes you so much guilt that you need to publicly ridicule people and an industry you know nothing about in an attempt to prove to yourself “at least I’m not as bad as a pornographer”?.
Never mind, we probably don’t want to know.
Ouch… Hunter, that’s insightful.
I really didn’t see you as a man with flames on his helmet, but as Goodwill pointed out… Wha Da Fuk do I know?
Yes, Hunter – nicely done.
What I don’t understand is why there seems no distinction in Goodwill’s perspective between the adult industry – self-explanatory there… “adult”… industry… right? And pedophilia… Am I making sense, yet?
How can you make the parallel between an adult engaging in a lawful trade and a murderer? It’s just not a good argument when the similarities aren’t there. Honestly, I see those pageants and instantly get the creeps. What adults want to do between themselves is their right to do, but children? Those pageants are fucking disgusting! I know damn well five-year-olds don’t beg their mothers to dress them up in bathing suits and make-up and parade them around to be graded by strangers. Ew and fucking ew!
Having worked with mainstream TV for 20 years, and knowing Mike for about 8, that has to be one of the most wildy inaccurate, illogical “analysis” ever on the internet.
Those “pagents” are some of the most vile, disgusting things you’ll ever see. Early in my freelance career, when needing to make some cash to pay the bills, I worked 2 days shooting one of those things. To think being critical of them would somehow allow Mike to justify his work is showing you’ve no idea who Mike is or what he’s about.
Parents take these children…yes, children…and slather makeup all over them, dress them in sequin outfits and teach them to parade themselves as young women. I have actually heard mothers…most of whom are either failed beauty queens themselves and/or seriously low self esteemed idiots…tell their daughters as young as 5…to “be more sexy when you walk down the runway”. Yep-good old Mom encouraging…well…. more like badgering…her 5 year old to to sex it up. I’ve watched dear Mom tell her daughter to “shake it baby!”. To listen to a mother and father discuss if a series of pictures is “hot enough”…ugh. Kids crying all over the place, being bullied and in one case threatened by her parents. Two of the most disgusting days I’ve ever worked.
This show will feature trainwreck after trainwreck of emotions. They’ll need confrontation (yes a producer will interject some if it’s not happening naturally), so we’ll see lots of crying children, Mom yelling and of course, kids “sexing it up”.
So who in the fucking world would this appeal to?
Two groups come to mind-people that want to see other people’s lives in chaos because they feel better about their own crappy lives (“hey I may be bad off but not as bad off as they are!”), and someone that enjoys watching little kids all dolled up.
The kids in this show had absolutely no say in appearing in it. It’s strictly the parents decision, to achieve their own 15 minutes of reality show fame for themselves. The justification is “it’s to help my kid’s career” or “because I want my child to be a star”. And behind the scenes? They all bugged the shit out of the producers about getting their own show. And would cut the kid out in a heartbeat to do it. Happens on every show I’ve worked on. These are VERY self absorbed poeple…see Jon and Kate for a great example.
Just because Mike shoots video of girls having sex does not disqualify him from commenting on such a disgusting concept of a show. I saw the same promo for this show, while watching tv with my girlfriend. Both of us were disgusted by the whole thing. Being someone that likes adult videos does that mean we can’t be disgusted?
Mike doesn’t take children and present them as adults. These pagents (and TLC) do.
And yet you come to Mike’s website of an adult nature, to express your displeasure with Mike’s disgust at this show, because Mike is morally unfit to comment because he worls in the adult business. Instead of doing what most “morally just” people would do….write TLC and tell them how awful this show is.
Funny-you bust on Mike yet allow the show, it’s creators and TLC a free pass.
So I must assume your moral code allows that this show is okay.
I never defended child pagentry, I simply gave it’s adult participants the benefit of the doubt. Whether or not I agree with Mike’s conclusion is irrelevant as to why he concluded it. If he is correct, all that proves is that yes, putting a child in one of these pagents will cause that child emotional damage. It doesn’t answer the question as what emotional trauma the adults have which makes them want to put them in the pagents. Mike wants to regard the existence of pedophilia as a self-evident primary. A phenomenon which just exists or, even better for him, comes about as a result of a sexually-repressed, porn-unsympathetic culture.
Instead, I offer the suggestion that what causes adults to sexualize things which they should not (their children) is the fact that so many other, less controversial things have already been sexualized – but have now lost their novelty. Pornography, probably more than any other single thing, is responsible for that. Being home alone on a week night is not a sexually arousing situation. Going into the office early in the morning to finish a project and then having an hour to spare before one’s coworkers show up is not a sexual situation. But pornography, by it’s very nature, says it is. To the extent that Mike South is involved in pornography, he is responsible for facilitating that. I know he would like to think that the pornography he produces is only used in the healthiest of ways – by single men once in a blue moon because the woman he went on a date with earlier in the evening turned out to be a flake, or by happy couples on a friday night over a bottle of wine – but he knows full well that most of the time this isn’t the case. He knows full well that if it were, the vast majority of pornographers – including himself – wouldn’t be in the business. Only he doesn’t want to know it – and so he concocts premature, more or less pointless indictments of things like child beauty pagents and posts them on his blog. All to hide from himself the nature of what it is that he does for a living. So he tell himself yes, he may pander to the neurotic urges of men who, left alone with a computer, just can’t help but to waste good time and money undermining their capacity to connect with a wife or a girlfriend, but at least he isn’t pandering to pedophiles like The Learning Channel is doing. He may feel, at times, an inexplicable, unprovoked sense of shame, and a shattering of his carefully-manicured self-respect (both things which he should feel), but at least he “knows” he’s not as bad as those sexually-repressed, pedophiliacs who put their children in beauty pagents.
Now, some of you might say that pornography does no such thing to the people who consume it. That is it actually helpful. That those involved in every aspect of it’s production are brining their own sexually-liberated, emotionally-stable perspective to their customers and in doing so helping them to avoid the pitfalls of a sexually-repressed culture (developing a prediliction for children included). I disagree. I say that just as pornography does no such thing to those who consume it to the point where they’re interested in the low-quality stuff Mike puts out – and in fact does the exact opposite to them – so to does it do what it does to those who produce it.
Here is my evidence: It can be reasonable assumed that everyone involved in this discussion has an above average involvement in the consumption or production, or both, of pornography. By any rational standard, an emotionally healthy adult, when confronted with an idea of any kind, either addresses that idea in full or discards it outright as fundamentally flawed. Instead, let’s examine what the response of those involved with pornography has been: Hunter and TVShooter chose not to deal with my idea and instead appeared to dismiss it outright. This would have been fine if that is actually what either had actually done, but did they? Both – one explicitly, one implicitly – conceded that the principle I initially raised was valid, but simply said that it did not apply to Mike South. Now, I understand that if all I had done was to make my assertion, they would not be obligated to provide evidence to the contrary, but since I did provide evidence to support my assertion, they should have addressed that evidence direction. If persuasion, instead of intimidation, had been the intention of either one of them, this is what they would have done. Instead, both just asserted that my assertion isn’t true, and then quickly moved into a counter-offensive position, attacking my person as hypocritical. If either were truly confident that I had not hit on something fundamental about Mike, he would have either refuted it fully, or simply denied it and said nothing else. Their emotions, however, drove them to attack me unnecessarily. I submit that this is a byproduct of the perspective on human relationships one must internalize in order to be successful in porn. That perspective is that facts are not facts, or that the nature of pornography is not the nature of pornography, so long as one can get those who might realize it to forget it. If emotional intimidation becomes necessary once emotional pandering has worn thin, so be it. JulieMeadows’ criticism is not worth addressing.
I am fully aware that I am a hypocrite. I realize that by being here I am adopting the exact same irrational standard of “as least I’m not as bad as…” that I am criticizing Mike for possessing. The only difference between myself and the rest of you is that I know that I am doing it, and that I have the courage to admit it. I am not here to persuade you – I am specifically here to intimidate you. To cause you unease and to intensify the self-doubt and inexplicable guilt you all constantly feel, but have defrayed, transmuted, and repressed. I want you to become accutely aware of it as often as possible, and I do that by letting you know that I know that it’s there, and that I understand it. Why do I do this? Primarily, in order to see how you will react. To remind myself that at root, underneath all of the glib and glamour and niceties, I am dealing with people who are fundamentally irrational and scared. My secondary purpose is to, perhaps, make the quality and/or quantity of your work suffer. In doing so, there will be less with which you can postpone anyone from dealing with the fundamental issue at hand. Both serve my ultimate purpose: I am trying to free myself of the trap people like you have put me in, and doing this is part of it.
DAMN, you use alot of words to say nothing.
Allow me to translate… “I’m addicted to cheap porn and it’s all Mike South’s fault”
With that in mind, I think I’ll compose a nasty letter to Anheuser-Busch… as I pop open another Mic Ultra.
I really don’t need a comment on my perspective. My feelings are right about child pageantry. It is disgusting. The adult industry is comprised of adults. It is a separate issue that should be addressed as such. Otherwise, yours is just mental masturbation for going on and on to people you may not really be aiming your anger at, correctly. But you wouldn’t consider that, would you? Pornography and how people use it are separate issues, as well. You can’t sell a cell phone and guarantee that people won’t create car accidents because they are using it irresponsibly. Surely there are pornographers who should be talked to about their issues, but I doubt your are the qualified person to do it – no disrespect intended – but you know so much about Mike and offer almost nothing personal about yourself… except some weird confession that you accept your issues and are trying, “To cause…unease and to intensify the self-doubt and inexplicable guilt you all constantly feel, but have defrayed, transmuted, and repressed.” Sounds guru-ish to me, and not really helpful. If you really want to help people, you expose yourself by really reaching out. All I see is someone who hits exposed people.
Well, since we seem to be quoting literature, my comment towards goodwill would be thus: “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” You’re here to intimidate because it lessens your guilt about something…that’s easy to see. Your last statements really just make you nothing more than an asshole, which isn’t boosting your self worth like you are intending to and certainly doesn’t make you any better than anyone else visiting or controlling this website. Nobody has put you into any trap but yourself. Look in the mirror, read all those attacking comments to yourself, and take personal responsibility for whatever directly confilicting beliefs you have in your belief system that are causing you so much torment. I don’t know Mike, and I’m not affiliated with the porn industry, so don’t try to address my comments with that fallacious line of crap. People on this site are expressing their personal beliefs as they see them, you however, aren’t being honest with yourself. And as Julie Meadows was accurately trying to point out, your comparisons were irrelevant and poorly thought through, no matter how well you tried to express them. Oh, and please step away from the child!
Oh, and using the name “Goodwill” with the self described intent of coming here to intimidate seems an awful lot like a pedophile who would try to deceive a child by offering them some candy !!!
Thank you, Cocaine Incorporated! There is NO comparison! Might as well compare Olympic swimmers with drug dealers. Construction workers with hitmen. bartenders with rapists. Might as well compare them just for being human, but that would make him/her comparable, as well. My guess? Twenty-year-old who is just starting to use their brain, just read Atlas Shrugged for the first time (and didn’t get it), and is an aspiring serial killer.
Hunter said: “With that in mind, I think I’ll compose a nasty letter to Anheuser-Busch… as I pop open another Mic Ultra.”
I think my original point has been demonstrated.
I wasn’t at all familiar with the show “Toddlers and Tiaras” when you first mentioned it, but today I happened to see a piece of it on the E! Channel today.
One mother said she spent $3000 on costumes, hair extensions and fake teeth for her child. Then she said, “She really showed the judges what she’s made of.” Sad, that at such a young age, the mother is teaching her child that she is the sum total of her looks. They even made the comment that buying costumes at WalMart was “not good enough”. So she’s also learning to be high maintenance.
The ironic thing is that the mother was a good 75 pounds overweight. If Mom needs to surround herself with people who dress and look ‘perfect’, I know a good place for her to start.
BTW, every time I hear about child beauty pageants, I think “Superfreak” and “Little Miss Sunshine.” She’s superfreaking out.
Goodwill,
As a self professed hypocrite, you neither intimidate me nor have any credibility whatsoever. Admitting you are a hypocrite is definitely the definition of insanity-doing something you know is stupid, yet you do it anyway.
Exactly what you want to intimidate me from doing…well you do a piss poor job of that.
You provide absolutely zero evidence to back up your point…or lack of one.
Since I do not work in the adult industry, exactly what are you trying to stop me from doing? You made an assumtion about me, therefore your entire analysis is based on what you think, not facts. Above average consumtion of porn? Okay-what’s the average?
By not defining any of the parameters you use to make such assumptions, yes I dismiss your entire arguement. That leaves just you-a self promoting, absorbed person that tries to make a point without any facts to back up his arguement. In your own words, you “offer suggestions” and “reasonably assume” then say because Mike doesn’t try and defend himself that proves your arguement.
Sorry Goodwill-can’t argue with stupid. Go find some facts,statistics or something….redo your entire analysis, and then submit it. try NOT assuming or suggesting or implying, or anything but stating factual basis for your point. Then it’s a discussion.
If you think my previous statements were an attack on you personally, well you only left that as an option because you have no foundation for any kind of a discussion. Again-can’t debate assumtions and suggestions.
Oh and btw….you are so not intimidating.