Child Beauty Pageant Coming to a Parish Near You!
It’s that time of year again. The time certain children all over Ireland have been eagerly anticipating. Second Class children in almost every Primary School in Ireland have endured months of vigorous training sessions which have only intensified over the past couple of months.
Despite, or perhaps because of her particularly young age and childlike demeanour, 7 year-old ‘Síofra’ (a name that supposedly makes her a ‘changeling child’ – one who was once human but eventually stolen and replaced by the faeries) is a very promising candidate for the role of being the first in line to receive a small piece of white wafer in the upcoming finals of the local Child Beauty Pageant. Speaking of her training regime, Síofra said that
… Things have really been hotting up since the First Confessions. You can tell that the compulsory voluntary attendance at the ‘Do This In Memory’ masses this past year have really helped to mould those who bothered to attend. The genuflecting in particular has reached new standards, with some children even attempting the sign of the cross while genuflecting combination – a deadly move.
Ms MeansWellButHasNeverQuestionedAnything and Mr IfItWasntForTheHolidaysIdNeverDoThisJob, who are responsible for choreographing this rogue ‘sign-of-the-cross-while-genuflecting’ combination said, “It’s a real game-changer. Only those who are really good at going along with things for no good reason are able for this move.” When questioned about children with Dyspraxia and their inability to compete in a fair and equal manner with the rest of the children, Ms MeansWellButHasNeverQuestionedAnything had to tend to a poster falling emergency.
This reporter can reveal that the poster of a flock of sheep, representing the ‘flock of God,’ with absolutely no sense of dramatic irony, was reinstated to its rightful place. The problem seemed to be due to insufficient blue tack. This reporter later learned and can reveal that the secret ingredient to ensuring the poster’s obedience is to instil a combination of guilt and ridicule into both the blue tack and the poster, so as to lower their self-worth and disempower them collectively, thereby resulting in the desired compliance.
When this reporter offered the suggestion that these pageants, colloquially referred to as ‘First Holy Communions,’ were very similar to the controversial American Child Beauty Pageants that were so vehemently opposed here in Ireland mere years ago, a spokesperson – I mean, spokesman – for the organisation responsible for running the event had this to say.
The First Holy Communion occasions are vastly different from those dreadfully demeaning American Child Beauty Pageants in many ways. Firstly, the communion dresses are all white. That’s very different. White is an entirely different colour to all the other colours God gave us. Secondly, the Holy Communion events are gender balanced and include boys. It just wouldn’t be fair, right, or just to exclude an entire group of people from an event based solely on their gender.
Thirdly, there are no real losers in the Holy Communion as everyone gets to eat a sacred piece of wafer that is really the son of God, the creator of the Universe. Fourthly and finally, the majority of schools in Ireland dedicate a sizeable proportion of their actual class time to preparing Second Class children for receiving the sacrament of First Holy Communion.
The spokesman continued:
No school in America offers such support to the pageants, and rightly so, as those American Beauty Pageants often involve children up to 8 and 9 years of age being forced in to it by their parents. Unlike this, First Holy Communion is the child continuing their own journey in the sacraments of the religion they agreed to during their baptism, shortly after they were born.
