Are America's Living Dolls Still Living A Nightmare?

Taken from The Daily Telegraph, UK, 17/11/2006

Red Bull, fake teeth and hair extensions – yes, the junior beauty pageant season is under way. And, 10 years after JonBenet Ramsey's murder, Michael Shelden discovers that little has changed in that bizarre world

The beauty queen flashes a big smile and stares straight into the video camera like an old pro, not batting an eyelid.

Surrounded onstage by balloons, teddy bears and trophies almost twice her height, pretty Regan Licciardello accepts her cash prize of $1,000 and proudly shows it to the crowd at the Universal Royalty Pageant in Austin, Texas, fanning out the banknotes like a gambler's winnings.



In pictures: a very peculiar practice

"Make sure we position the money just right," the pageant director says from offstage. A moment later the display of notes across her winner's sash is in perfect alignment with Regan's smile. It is the kind of pose you'd expect of a Vegas showgirl, but this girl in a sequined dress and heavy make-up is only five years old.

It has been 10 years since the death of JonBenet Ramsey, who was a beauty queen at six, and whose unsolved murder cast a spotlight on the glitzy and fiercely competitive world of children's pageants. Almost every story about the murder carried images of JonBenet dolled up like an adult, staring vacantly into the camera or prancing onstage in a cowgirl outfit singing: "I want to be a cowboy sweetheart."

When John Mark Karr – an itinerant teacher with an obsession about young girls – was briefly held as a suspect in her murder earlier this year, people leapt to the conclusion that he had once stalked her. Old footage of her grainy videos was aired again, making it seem that the bizarre world of pre-pubescent showgirls belonged to the past.

But it never went away. Thousands of American mothers are still painting eye shadow and lip gloss on their little daughters and entering them in pageants week after week, as I discovered this month.
More than 3,000 beauty contests for children are held in America each year. One of JonBenet's titles was "Little Miss Colorado", but the epicentre of the pageants is Texas, where the competition to win a major title on the popular Universal Royalty circuit is intense.

What I found there earlier this month at the start of the pageant season in Texas is that JonBenet's old cowgirl routine wouldn't raise an eyebrow. If anything, it would be regarded as a little tame by parents whose determination to make their daughters glamorous hasn't been affected in the least by the unsolved case of the murdered queen.

The first person I met in Austin was Annette Hill, the head of Universal Royalty. She is a tall, attractive black woman in her early forties who makes no apologies for her line of work. With the help of a small staff, she holds a pageant somewhere in Texas every week and is known affectionately by her loyal following as "Miss Annette".

"I'm like everybody's aunt," she tells me during a break at the pageant that features Regan and 83 other contestants ranging in age from infants to teens. "The girls like it when they see me and I say, 'Come here, sugar. Aren't you just so pretty?' "

She speaks bluntly of her frustration at having to comment so often on the case of JonBenet, whom she didn't know, and whose death she can't explain. "We're sick and tired of hearing about her," she tells me with a dismissive shake of her head. "The media has to stop making it sound like pageants had something to do with her death. That didn't have nothing to do with nothing."

After 13 years in the business, she thinks she understands the appeal of her contests. It is simple, she says. Girls like to dress up and mothers like to show them off. She refuses to acknowledge that there is anything provocative about the way the girls look and is cheerfully prepared to punch any "pervert" trying to crash one of her events. "Ain't no child perverts going to get in here," she says, feistily. "They can't get past me. Besides, these parents would kick their butts."

There is a good reason why she wants to promote the image of her pageants as innocent fun.

She makes an excellent living, charging parents an average of almost £500 for each child who enters one of her major competitions. In return, she awards about a third of the contestants with a small trophy or a modest amount of cash while a few parents actually break even by earning one of the top awards of £500 – the same amount as the entry fee. The pride of winning seems to mean as much as the cash, but Annette thinks it doesn't hurt to have the girls flash their banknotes at the end. "Believe me," she says, "the parents want to see that money."

Managing a pageant is no easy task. This one – which is held on a Saturday in the ballroom of a suburban hotel – begins at eight in the morning and goes on for more than 12 hours. The youngest contestants appear first so they can nap in the afternoon. "The babies are perkier in the morning," Annette says. And, indeed, her pageant starts with children who are only a year old. Their parents parade them across the stage, holding them up in the air wriggling like puppies for the four judges to admire.

A sound system plays dreamy tunes by the likes of Michael Bolton and Whitney Houston while a female announcer describes the baby's special qualities, working from a script provided by the parents.

"She enjoys taking long naps and playing peek-a-boo," the announcer says of one tiny girl, keeping a straight face as she adds: "Her ambition is to walk by herself."

Prizes are given within each age group, but the big interest lies with the four- to five-year-olds. Throughout the morning, 10 girls in this category appear in fancy costumes and swimsuits, some strutting confidently across the stage while a few merely shuffle forward looking lost in the bright lights.

From the outset, it is clear that Regan is the frontrunner. She has memorised the routine perfectly. One moment she is swirling effortlessly on her heels and batting her eyelashes at the judges, the next she is crossing her legs and holding her hands out beside the wide folds of her dress, smiling over her shoulder. The other girls have some similar moves, but only Regan has them all.

Her strongest competitors include a leggy, brown-skinned girl in a cheerleading outfit, and a round-faced child with a helmet of hair piled so high she seems in danger of falling over. The first child seems to be under the supervision of her father, and the announcer notes that the girl's uniform represents daddy's favourite team, the Dallas Cowboys.

Whenever the second child takes the stage, her blue jean-clad mother leaps up to signal moves to her from the aisles, making faces and waving her arms behind the backs of the judges. The child stares at her self-consciously and tries to mimic the moves, resembling a wind-up doll in slow motion.

"Win, lose or draw, we have fun," the mother tells me afterwards. Then, looking into the daughter's expressionless face, she asks, brightly: "We have lots of fun, don't we?" The child nods dutifully.

The judges seem aware of the over-active stage mothers, but don't pay their antics much attention. "The things that matter the most," the one male judge – Michael Flores – tells me, "are smiles and personality. I value them more than all the glitz and glamour."

He shows me a sample scorecard, with a list of marks like those in figure skating – 9.4, 9.5 and so on to a perfect 10. With professional pride, Michael points out that he is strictly forbidden from sharing his opinions of the contestants with his fellow judges. They mark their cards in secret and submit them to an independent tabulator who sits at the opposite end of the ballroom.

In accordance with the rules, the parents keep their distance from the judges, and are cautioned by Annette to show good sportsmanship and not to dispute the final verdicts. But some of the mothers are not above voicing complaints when asked.

A pretty blonde whose four-year-old is a newcomer tells me that she finds the polished act of Regan "scary". She has dressed her child in a long gown that lacks any touches of glitter, and says – with a sideways look in the direction of some fancier contestants – "I don't want my daughter to look like them."

She says that her daughter wanted to enter the pageant after winning a few local contests elsewhere, but that neither of them had anticipated such serious competition in Austin.
In a low voice, she tells me that she has been surprised by the conduct of some of the other mothers. She has seen one kicking a little girl's shoe to straighten her foot and another "shoving Red Bull" down her child's throat. The high-energy drink is supposed to make the girls more animated onstage.

"I overheard a mother tell her daughter to giggle-wiggle," she says, wide-eyed with disbelief. "It makes me feel sorry for them. All I've told my daughter is just to smile and be natural. That's what it should be all about." This mother and daughter probably won't be back. Later, I watch as the child walks off the stage empty-handed..

After naptime, I finally get the chance to meet the star of the show and her mother. At first, I barely recognise Regan when I find her playing outside the ballroom in ordinary clothes.

Suddenly, without hair extensions and full make-up, she looks more like a five-year-old instead of a child pretending to be a miniature woman. "I can count to 100," she says gleefully and proves it while I chat with her mother.

Unlike Regan onstage, Bonnie Licciardello dresses modestly and doesn't wear much jewellery or make-up. She speaks quietly and seems every inch the proper suburban Texas housewife. But since her daughter's infancy, she has been grooming Regan for a different kind of life. She entered the girl in their first pageant on Regan's first birthday. Now the child is such a veteran of the circuit that they have accumulated over 400 trophies and 200 crowns.

"They say that mothers in these contests are living through their daughters," Bonnie remarks in a soft voice. "Well, that's not the case with Regan. She's a performer. She wants to do it. When she was only three, she would cuddle up to me in the morning and ask, "Momma, do I have a pageant today?"

Regan quickly stood out and attracted the interest of modelling agencies. This past year she has earned about £40,000 from pageants, regional television commercials and print ads. Next year her mother is taking her to Hollywood for film and television auditions. Being Regan is big business now.

Though Bonnie admits that the world of child beauty pageants is "a little odd", she doesn't think it has adversely affected her or her daughter. She can't say the same about some of the other mothers, who seem to resent Regan's success and take it out on their own children.

"The other mothers know Regan is the one to beat. They phone the pageant ahead of time and ask, 'Is Regan coming?' Some moms get snippy if their child loses. I've seen them pull a girl off the stage and yell at her. They will say to her face, 'You suck.' I hear it every pageant."

She insists she never has to point out any shortcomings to Regan. They usually watch the video of a pageant afterwards and she says that her daughter is invariably the one to spot mistakes first.

"She will tell me not only if she did something wrong, but also if she sees another girl make a mistake. 'Mamma,' she will say, 'that girl looked at the floor.' In pageants you should always keep your eyes on the judges, never on the floor."

In the pursuit of perfection, Bonnie uses hair pieces on her daughter, but says she draws the line at other artificial enhancements. "Some of the girls wear fake teeth, thin veneers to improve their smiles. They call them flippers. I will never put a flipper on my child."

By nightfall there is nothing left to do but hand out the awards. Nobody is surprised when Regan wins the top title and the highest cash prize, but there are a few sour expressions among the families of some "future winners".

Next year may fare better for them. Bonnie confides that she is thinking of "weaning" Regan away from pageants. She will soon turn six and other worlds are waiting to be conquered. "We're thinking of figure skating or movies," she says. "Who knows? When we go out to Hollywood, anything could happen. Maybe Disney will call."

I don't have the heart to say that Regan's glitzy looks will need to be toned down considerably for Disney. But if my visit to the pageant has taught me anything, it's that none of the mothers seems to understand how strange their daughters look to outsiders.

Every mother sees what she wants to see in her child, which must explain why poor Patsy Ramsey, mother of JonBenet, never understood why much of the world thought her living doll was living a nightmare.