Parents who let their four-year-old daughter wear fake tan, false nails, makeup have been accused of “sexualising” their child.
Enrika and Wayne Milne let their daughter Arielle enter beauty pageants claiming that she “likes the attention” she gets from them.
The Milnes can spend up to £350 on Arielle every time she enters a pageant.
The couple appeared on ITV’s This Morning today to defend their decision to allow their daughter to compete in these competitions and dress the way she does.
According to them, the costumes their daughter wears are no different to the clothes that children wear when they play a sport or go to the beach.
“She’s one of those who wants to do herself up, she comes to the shop and asks me to do her nails,” said Enrika.
Many viewers of the programme were not too convinced.
One Twitter user said “let children be children” in all caps. Another said that the parents were making these decisions for their daughter.
One said that “poor” pageant children are being sexualised and that there was “nothing beautiful” about “horrible revealing costumes.”
#ThisMorning #sexualising Seeing very young girls dressed in glamour clothing is just awful, so appearance centred and the dancing, just NO
— Kerry Smith (@kezsmith78) August 16, 2017
#ThisMorning personally I think putting makeup and dressing your child up at the age of 4 is unacceptable.
— Tyler James (@tyler20james) August 16, 2017
https://twitter.com/Wee_lisa_louu/status/897770818532294657
Others argued that it was viewers who were sexualising the child.
They said that if the four-year-old wanted to enter pageants and dress up in costumes, it should not be an issue.
