TLC specials are the sideshows of our times.
Funny, that’s how I feel about Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise.
Though in all seriousness, rhubarbarin, when flipping channels past TLC, that thought has often crossed my mind. We didn’t get rid of freak shows–they just went digital.
Too true. Only the people making the money aren’t the ones who should have it.
One night on TLC I watched a special about the Stiles family in FLA, also known as the lobster people. Their genetics have produced at least one person with ectrodactyly for six generations. One of the women was interviewed checking out groceries and made the irritated comment that once upon a time she made a good living sitting on a stage all day and now she worked for minimum wage, showed her hands for free and had to stand all day.
I do understand her perspective. A family’s way of life has been co-opted by people who are sympathetic to those who are different but offended by their proclivities!
As long as we “stare and care” it’s all in the sake of education. Of course the original carnies knew that a long time ago as their old pitch books indicate.
Something in curiosity about the other is supposed to be verboten. It strikes me as hypocrisy most vile. 
Well, I look at it from the same POV of someone who’s, say, a model and then standards change and no one wants her type anymore. (Hypothetically–in real life, by the time standards change, your average model is too old to model.) It’s sad but I don’t think people necessarily owe you a living because you want to make a living doing x. If people don’t want to pay to see you, that’s life.
The demand creates the market, yes. Of course marketing folks have their ways of creating the demand as well.
And the carnival folks who were making a living at exhibiting themselves claim to have been making a good living. And apparently the demand is still there and switched to a new venue which claims higher motives. Reality tv seems to bear that out.
The well-meaning people in cities where human anomalies were making their living went to the courts and argued that the public display of human beings for profit was offensive and exploitative. And they won, effectively barring the exhibitors from making a living in their traditional way.
The people displaying themselves argued that they were not the modern day Elephant Man and that they were chosing the occupation by choice. Some argued that it was the only thing they could do in their situation and I think it’s a valid argument. At the time, and still, there are many conditions which can’t be ameliorated by modern medicine.
So presently their only recourse, other than the internet or the underground, is to participate in a venue where they no longer have control over their finances. Ironic, since that thwarts the original intent of the do-gooders. At least as it was presented. Personally I think there may have been an element of revulsion there which could hardly have been mentioned without offending the very people they purported to “help” out of their “plight.”
Your mention of trends in models may be valid in a popular culture sort of way but the models, I believe, never did have the autonomy that the carnival people did.
(Think of all the poor models right now who are rushing to the orthodontist to get that essential space between the front teeth engineered. Ah, the things people will do for money. Heh.)
Most of my information on this is from a decade of researching carnival culture and haunting carnival forums where I conversed with the last of the dying culture. Straight from the Horse Man’s mouth so to speak.