Why did the JonBenét Ramsey case put child beauty pageants under the microscope?
It’s impossible to separate thoughts of JonBenét from the photos of her that accompanied the headlines in those days, the 6-year-old looking both like a miniature doll and way too grown-up in glamour shots.
On June 1, 1996, JonBenét competed in the Royal Miss state pageant in Denver, and a month later won Gingerbread Production of America’s Little Miss Colorado, Mini Supreme division. It was around that time Patsy wanted her daughter to have a portfolio and she posed for many of the heavily made-up photos that the whole country would see a few months later. She was crowned Little Miss Christmas at the All Star Kids Christmas pageant at the Airport Holiday Inn on the outskirts of Denver on Dec. 17. She was at a nearby shopping mall in an appearance sponsored by America’s Royal Miss on Dec. 22.
A week after she was killed, ABC’s Denver affiliate aired video footage of JonBenét at the Christmas pageant. Then Sunburst supplied another TV station with a tape from the summer. This was easily the first that most people had ever heard of beauty pageants for little children.
“That fascinated people,” Grace told E! News. “There were a lot of pictures and video of her that you don’t always have with child victims, so the public got to see her over and over and over again—and thereby, ergo, believe they knew her. They became familiar with her, they think they know JonBenét and they therefore felt her loss even more deeply.”
Twelve years before Toddlers & Tiaras would premiere on TLC, the argument was already raging over whether it was appropriate for children as young as JonBenét to be competing in what amounted to a beauty pageant, regardless of any talent portion, or whether it was flat-out exploitation. It also served to turn her parents—particularly her mother—into more suspicious, possibly villainous characters.
