France bans child beauty pageants

France’s child pageant fixation and policies are not nearly as grotesque as the ones in the United States where Honey Boo Boo and Toddlers in Tiaras are popular forms of “entertainment,” yet the nation knows how destructive it is to place such a heavy emphasis on the appearance of 6 to 15 year old girls. So they went and banned child beauty pageants for anyone under the age of 16.

Boom.

This is what countries who take care of their citizens do when something is harming so many. It’s like the hundreds of countries who ban harmful food additives, fertilizers and even PVC when our own practically subsidizes cancer-causing poisons for breakfast, lunch and dinner. France is also the country that banned the production of television shows for the under 3 crowd because—duh—it’s bad for them.

And make no mistake: this is France. This is not a country of prudish spinsters who are fearful of sex (isn’t that supposed to be us?). They are not doing this out of shame of the human body, but as a shame on the culture that has so brazenly embraced the idea of selling children as sex objects.

Childhood is already too brief. You only get one in a lifetime. Why rush the hell out of it and why use kids for such garish entertainment? I sincerely wish that the United States would follow suit but it’s such a profitable business in this country that I don’t see it ending anytime soon.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia