This gets more and more disturbing the longer I ponder it. Beauty Pageants for kids are among the most detestable and horrible things you can do to your child, in my humble opinion, but this really looks like a winner. This photo website offers to ‘enhance’ – read: retouch – the photos of you kid/baby. Now, while not inherently wrong it sure is wrong if your kid ends up looking like a pedophile RealDoll (wikipedia link, but link to the official page is NSFW) Lover.
Salon’s Catherine Prices writes in her column that at her first glance she mistook the intro photo as an ad for turning child into one of those All-American dolls…but it is just retouched photo. Here is another photo. And another. I don’t know about you, but I think this is wrongwrongwrong! They’re kids, for God’s sakes! The woman who does the retouching is also a professional pageant photographer and you can see some of her work here. I refrained from posting pictures myself, because it didn’t really feel right. These kids are sexualized in a way that I think is not acceptable.
This is much more to my liking: an Octopus-Baby Costume! How cute is that? Ectoplasmosis dug that one out and, gee, I have to borrow a baby!
(picture from Ectoplasmosis)
On a second thought, the Sweet Tooth Shark Costume is even more adorable:
(picture from Babystyle)
Filed under: Art and Stuff, Bizarre-O-Rama, Photography , animals, children, costume, squids
I wandered over to that website. The before and after samples of their work on these babies are scary. I am so curious if the samples shots would actually bring clients?
Considering the aesthetic of the whole children beauty pageant subculture I think, sadly, they do…