If authorities did in fact find the killer of JonBenet Ramsey, that’s good news.
Unfortunately, at least one picture of 6-year-old JonBenet tarted up pageant-style seems to accompany every article about the news. Does that bother anyone besides me?
I know the beauty queen angle is what has this country so tittilated over the murder in the first place, but shouldn’t we be showing pictures of her as a kid, not made up like some woman-child? Wasnt that creepy and weird before, and isn’t it moreso now that the articles discuss the arrest of a convicted sex offender for the crime?
Sometimes the media gives me goosebumps — and not the good kind, either. We’re talking the kind you get when you’re Agent Starling walking the long walk past the other disturbed prisoners to see Hannibal Lecter.
Brrr.
I’d believe no one ever took a picture of the poor kid where she wasn’t dressed as a woman.
Hideous, isn’t it? WTF are some people thinking? Yes, let’s make up a six year old girl like Mae Frickin’ West, complete with body language. or as best a six year old can manage. and force her to perform like a trained seal. That’s perfectly normal and wholesome, really.
seriously, why isn’t this shit covered under child labor laws or something? i realize “just plain seriously fucked up” probably won’t get too far off the ground, legally.
anyone see “Little Miss Sunshine,” p.s.?
What I find interesting about this whole thing is that our collective unease with how we raise girl children to be sex objects was displaced on the Ramseys, who were unfairly accused of a pretty hideous crime by much of the public. I feel sorry for them. In a weird way, it’s not that weird that people of their social strata dress their daughters up and enter them in beauty pagents so young. A girl of that class is being prepped to be a trophy wife and therefore the most important skills to teach her are to be effortlessly “charming” at all points in time.
In other words, in a weird way, I think Patsy Ramsey was trying to make her daughter the best in her field.
We’re angry with the Ramseys because they were in a class where the female competition for rich husbands was intense and the preparation couldn’t be subtle. They exposed something that most of us do for young girls with Barbie dolls and Easy Bake Ovens.
I feel sorry for them. Even though they’re not “my kind” of people, they suffered a pretty grave injustice with the accusations flung at them.
Almost infinitely creepy and gruesome (totally aside of the ghastly murder itself). Like belledame, I can’t understand why this whole sexualise-your-child thing hasn’t been made illegal.
Yeah, I just had a breakdown (read: brain implosion) about this. Also, if that Karr guy is guilty, jesus fucking christ, he’s sick.
They were pimping out a six year old.
I feel like, by showing the pictures, they’re doing the same thing as when they talk about a rape victim wearing a halter top- trying in some way to say “well, she or her parents did something to deserve this”- which, as we know, is bullshit. It makes people feel “safe” because then they think that this sort of thing couldn’t happen to them. Also bullshit.
Now, surely, you’ve all noticed before that there’s nothing the media likes better than a blonde that died young. Monroe… Di… Jon Benet… You can bet that if Elizabeth Smart had been killed she’d be as creepified by now, too.
I don’t know what goes through peoples’ tiny little minds sometimes, really.
what I don’t understand is who wants to -see- the goddam things in the first place. the pageants i mean. i mean, i already think it’s bogus and creepy to push your kid into contests and shit–i really loathe stage parents in general–but at least in something like I don’t know the GEerber baby contest, okay, cute kids, everyone go “awww.” fine, whatever.
why on earth do people want to see six year olds dressed like forty-year olds? and who -are- these people? because they can’t -all- be creepy overtly pedophile perverts in trenchcoats, or they wouldn’t make much money, I don’t think. So…whose brilliant idea was this, exactly?
Like Amanda says, the audience is probably the other parents who want to make sure their little trophies-in-training are measuring up to the competition.