Word: pageants
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...JonBenet and her mother, Patricia Ramsey, a former Miss West Virginia, the contests may have been good fun. For pageant organizers, they often mean big bucks. Throughout the country, especially in California and the South, a complex network of pageant systems, as they are called, make up the circuit, with pageants sponsored by the likes of Hawaiian Tropic and Beauty Unlimited held in shopping malls and hotel ballrooms. According to Ted Cohen, editor of the International Directory of Pageants, there are about 3,000 pageants a year in the U.S., 500 of which cater to the preteen-and-under...
...profits come from basic entrance fees, which can run as high as a few hundred dollars, with extra registration fees charged for each optional event, such as modeling or talent. Organizers also sell pageant jewelry and publish journals that earn money through advertising. And before the parents are done, they have usually shelled out hundreds more for costumes (in the better pageants they must be handmade, not off the rack), makeup, voice or dance lessons, pageant consultants and travel...
...potential rewards for all these outlays of money and time are tempting. While some contests merely offer trophies or teddy bears as prizes, others award cars, cash or scholarship money. A pageant based in Florida, Sunburst U.S.A. International, gives away more than $1 million in prizes every year. At age six, Lisa Iverson is already "Miss American Beauty Queen of Hearts," "Children of the World Supreme Winner," "U.S.A. National Scholarship Little Miss," Hawaiian Tropic "Superstar Photogenic," Hawaiian Tropic "Hollywood Babe" and "Miss American Starlet Fashion Model." She has won enough money to pay for college...
...seen it all. "I've seen mothers take young girls right off the stage before the judging results even come in and yell at them in the bathroom about blowing it. I've even seen a mother yelling at her kid, and then the child wins the pageant. All of a sudden the child becomes a little angel...
...many parents insist it is the child (usually a girl, although there are "Little Beau" events for boys) who is lured by the limelight. When Randi Anderson entered her first pageant, at age four, "she was so shy that when the other girls came out she put her head down," says her mother Pattie. "She didn't win the competition, and she was very upset with herself. My husband said to her, 'You don't have to do this anymore.' She looked up and said, 'But I want to do it.'" Before Lisa Iverson could even walk, she would crawl...