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Source Review # 1
Wonderlich, Anna, Diann Ackard, and Judith Henderson. "Childhood Beauty Pageant
Contestants: Associations With Adult Disordered Eating And Mental Health."
Eating Disorders 13.3 (2005): 291-301. Academic Search Complete. Database. 8 Oct.
2013 from rattler.tamucc.edu/.
Wonderlich, Ackard, and Henderson conducted a study involving 22 college aged women. The
22 were narrowed down from 560 female university students who took a survey. 11 were chosen
that said they participated in childhood beauty pageants, and another 11 were chosen that
matched the other girls’ body mass index within one point and age within one year, and had not
participated in childhood beauty pageants. Included in the survey, was a series of tests, including
the Bulimia-Revised, the Eating Disorders-Inventory 2, the Body Images Assessment, The
Center for Epidemiological Studies-Depression scale, and the Rosenburg Self-Esteem scale.
These tests evaluated if the women had been told or felt they had an eating disorder, what they
perceived their body type to be, what they wished it would be, if they were depressed at all, and
evaluated their overall self-esteem.
The significant results indicated that the women who were in pageants as a child scored higher
on the Eating Disorders-Inventory 2, which specified a great association between childhood
beauty pageants and increased dissatisfaction with their bodies, difficulty trusting other people,
and great feelings on ineffectiveness. Also, depression scores were higher, and self-esteem
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scores were lower for the women who were in the pageants, suggesting that on average, preadolescent and adolescent girls who are involved in pageants are more likely to suffer
emotionally and mentally than girls who are not involved in pageants. “Results from the current
study indicate that women who participated in childhood beauty pageants scored significantly
higher on measures of body dissatisfaction, interpersonal distrust, and impulse dysregulation
than women who did not participate in childhood beauty pageants. Also, there was a trend for
childhood beauty pageant participants to report greater feelings of ineffectiveness than nonparticipants” (Wonderlich, Ackard, and Henderson 297).
The authors are representing facts of self-evaluation. Unlike most studies that only
comment on speculation about how these little girls grow up to feel about themselves, this study
pulls the information from the mouths of a sample of the pageant girls that are now women. The
facts that are being left out are the ones of how the women were treated during the pageants.
Their issues could have nothing at all to do with the fact that they participated in pageants as
children. It could just be a coincidence that they feel badly about themselves. The economic bias
in this study is the fact that the authors only focused on women who were in college. They did
not take into account the young women who were in child beauty pageants that did not receive a
college education. A social bias in this source is the sample of participants that were chosen. No
men were asked to participate, even though little boys do take part in pageants.
The original journal this study was published in, Routledge, focuses on displaying works
of academic quality. Their intended audience is the people who read their journal, which tend to
be educated adults. This argument is very persuasive because it was found through a database,
which means it is credible. It states all methods of research and even backs those up by saying
why they are credible. This study even states its negative constraints, which are the small sample
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size, the use of only college students, and the fact that the full effects of participating in child
beauty pageants may not be fully realized by the college years.