They help her self-confidence.

I have a shameful addiction, even more embarrassing than my love for Duran Duran and Easy Cheese.  I cannot stop watching pageant shows on WE and TLC.  Exploitative parents?  Check.   Unrealistic expectations?  Yep.  Enormous pressure placed on tiny shoulders?  Of course.  Women who wish they were still young enough to compete so they force their daughters to dress in matching outfits so they can compete together?  Don't you ever doubt it.  Tragic, inbred families who have one lone beautiful child they hope will save them (and their gene pool) from poverty/obscurity/institutionalization?  Yes, oui and da.  Fathers who watch blandly as their wives/sisters/mothers/grandmothers turn their children into hateful, vain, selfish, spoiled, greedy, arrogant little bitches?  You betcha.  Mothers who spend an entire month's salary on one beaded dress that makes her daughter look like a cowgirl stripper from the 50s, but keep the expense from the husband?  What he doesn't know won't hurt him.  Telling the world that no expense (nails, hair, tanning, clothing) is too great as long as it makes the little girl happy?  Paging Suze Orman.  Hiring a pageant coach/hairdresser/choreographer for a two-year-old  because only the most artificial child with the biggest hair is allowed to win?  Sing out, Louise.  Teaching the next generation that the only thing in the world that matters, aside from getting married before you get fat, is being pretty?  Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the vainest of them all?  All-encompassing fury boiling in my innards, so hot and violent that you can hear the enamel being ground from my teeth three counties over?  Just ask Farmer Bob in Snohomish.  He made a complaint about the noise.  

I'm so deeply ashamed that I now know the what flippers are and that the Grand Supreme title is for the contestant with the highest overall score.  Now where's my shoe so I can beat some sense into these parents?