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Kids are adorable and sometimes parents love messing with their appearance.

After all, they are so young, they don’t care how funny looking they are.

Things take a disturbing turn, though, when parents mess with their kids’ looks for child pageants and other such competitions.

There’s something confusing and bewildering about beauty pageants, especially when the contestants are children.

Sometimes, they exhibit diva behavior and other times the parents are the ones acting like prima donnas.

If you’re not familiar with the ins and outs of these pageants, here is some insight, provided by Wikipedia!

A child beauty pageant is a beauty contest featuring contestants under 16 years of age. Competition categories may include talent, interview, sportswear, casual wear, swim wear, western wear, theme wear, outfit of choice, decade wear, and evening wear.

Depending on the type of pageant system (glitz/natural), contestants may be found wearing makeup to fake teeth, known as flippers, as well as elaborate hairstyles and custom, designed and fitted, outfits to present their routines on stage.

Beauty pageants started in 1921 when the owner of an Atlantic City hotel struck upon the idea to help boost tourism. However, that idea had already circulated through “Most Beautiful Child” contests held in major cities across the country. The Little Miss America pageant began in the 1960s at Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey.

Originally, it was for teenagers from 13 to 17 years old, but by 1964 there were over 35,000 participants, which prompted an age division. The modern child beauty pageant emerged in the early 1960s, held in Miami, Florida.

Since then, the industry has grown to include about 250,000 pageants. It is an increasingly lucrative business, bringing in about twenty billion dollars a year to the Americas with its popularity spreading worldwide.

The murder of JonBenét Ramsey in late 1996 turned the public spotlight onto child beauty pageants. Critics began to question the ethics of parents who would present their child in a way that was perhaps not suitable for their age.

In 2001, American Network HBO aired its Emmy-winning Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen, which garnered much attention. Additionally, TLC, also an American network, has created shows such as Toddlers & Tiaras and King of the Crown, the former dedicated to the world of high glitz child pageantry and the latter to the world of pageant coaching.

Families on TLC’s hit television series Toddlers & Tiaras are subject to intense criticism for negatively influencing their children that their physical appearance will score them attention and prizes. The show first aired in 2009 and follows the child participants and their parents as they prepare for the upcoming beauty pageant of the weekend.

The show is non-narrated to avoid showing opinion and has sparked heavy controversy in the last few years, due to actions including allowing a child to smoke a fake cigarette during the talent portion of the competition, forcing a child to wear fake breasts and a parent who allowed her child to dress like a prostitute in the “outfit of choice” category.