Sofa King Podcast

On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we polish our tiaras and talk about child beauty pageants. They of course made national news with the tragic death of Jonbenet Ramsey in 1996. But after that, they stayed in the forefront of popular culture. HBO’s influential documentary called Living Dolls lead to the TV show Toddlers in Tiaras and the flaming turd filled train wreck that was Honey Boo Boo. Each year, over 250,000 children participate in America alone. From underage prostitutes to 8 year olds getting motel Botox, this one has it all. You would think that beauty pageants for children came from the sick minds of the current generation, but there is in fact a long history. P.T. Barnum organized a kid’s beauty pageant in 1855 called the National Baby Show, and it gained 143 contestants and an audience of over 60,000. This spread to other similar ideas, mostly judging naked babies like cattle. By the 1920s, however, the modern adult beauty pageants was born in New Jersey (of course it was…). From there,