Well of course it’s to make money. That goes without saying. RO is the path by which they do so, thus the show’s reason for existence. The very fact that this thread exists is proof of that.
Disclosure: I haven’t watched the show.
However, I became aware of pageants during the JonBenet case too.
These are little girls and they’re being totally sexualized.
Four and five year old girls painted up like baby tarts and taught to shake their nonexistent stuff.
It really make me ill that a parent would exploit their child like this.
There is no show on TV that pisses me off as much Toddlers & Tiaras. The commercials alone fuel my rage.
They have pageants for boys now too. I assume this is partly boys desperate for some of the attention they see their sisters getting, plus the rare boy who will grow up to win RuPaul’s Drag Race, but mostly it’s moms who are disappointed they didn’t have a little girl. That’s the revolting part.
Here’s an ABC article about it:
And the url of the Prince Charming USA contest, just for the ick factor.
http://www.princecharmingusa.com/
But mostly I’m posting here to link to this video of Tom Hanks and his “daughter” at the Ultimate Sexy Baby contest from the Jimmy Kimmel Show
I could probably make a long list of all the harm these intense pageant people are doing to their daughters, but one of the most important ones IMO is that it teaches young girls that their worth is based on their looks and not much else. There’s nothing wrong with telling a girl she’s beautiful, but she needs to be built up in other ways in addition to that. It’s bad on these reality shows, but real life is where it gets depressing.
Go into any girls clothing section and look at the words on the graphic tees or jeans, or shorts, whatever. I very rarely see action words and overwhelmingly see little cutesy phrases or smartypants comments. I find it terribly depressing that girls as young as five are thinking about things such as dieting and weight. No kid should ever worry about every morsel of food they eat, or having the right spray tan and acrylic nails. Everything those pageants do reinforces superficial “talent” and worth based on flirting and winning a stupid trophy.
I’m all for young girls taking dance classes or gymnastics, or whatever they are interested in. But it needs to be clear that this kind of stuff is for fun, not competition. Any other motive just sort of sickens me, especially when it’s more about the moms living out some kind of weird fantasy of their own. I can’t imagine any sane parent who gives a shit about their child’s developing psyche could think for even a second that it’s anything but bullshit.
As bad as it is on kids, what the promoters do the financial security of parents is even worse. I cringe when I hear of a parent taking out a second on their homes and spending $33,000 last year on pageants. (as one did) That 33k would have made a nice contribution to a college education. It seems the only ones winning are the promoters. They should be first in line for the tar and feathering.
I’ve seen it a couple of times. What bothers me is how unhappy the girls are. They don’t seem to be having much fun, and the pageants often end in tears except for the grand super winner.
I was in a child beauty pageant when I was five. I won second prize.
(Cue Monopoly joke.)
Yeah, it’s messed up, but a lot of the drama is manufactured for the cameras. The children learn to pretend on stage, and this show teaches them to pretend when they’re off of it.
Ding ding ding. I have to say that this is perhaps the most horrifying aspect of the show, to me at least. Not only are the parents damaging their fincial lives in the short term, but they are also squandering away tons of money that could be spent to educate their daughters in the future. $30k? That’s a year at college!
I won’t lie: I watch this show. What can I say? I don’t even have kids, yet this show makes me feel like I’m an excellent parent.
To me, one of the most horrifying things is the spray tanning of the little kids. Someone was spray tanning her eighteen month old. 18 month old! Speaking as someone who gets spray tans, that shit is unpleasant at best- it’s sticky, it’s cold, it’s stinky, and it hurts if you breath it in accidentally. Plus, there aren’t exactly any long term studies about the health of spray tanning for your lungs. As an adult, I can weigh the cost and benefit of spray tanning and decide whether I want to or not. Forcing spray tanning on a kid who doesn’t understand it and doesn’t want it is fucked up.
Another awful thing is the mothers. Unlike everyone else, I’m not most bothered by how the moms are treating their daughters (as someone mentioned, this is far from surprising because dads do it all the time with their boys and sports). Rather, I’m bothered by how the moms treat the little girls that aren’t their own- catty smack talking, dirty looks, eye rolls, refusing to clap. Not that I’d expect anything better from these horrible excuse for people, but jesus christ. . .
I like that these things exist. I’d never watch them, but it’s nice to know that the seedier strip clubs will be able to keep their rotation of girls full for the foreseeable future.
If you really want to see adults behaving badly, watch Dance Moms. This week’s episode had two girls who were competing hug each other and say “I love you” while the moms screamed at each other and the dance coach in front of the kids. Nice.
You have succinctly summarized both my problem with pageants in general and why I in particular buy my daughter t-shirts from the boy’s section. (that, and having an eight-month-old girl wearing a shirt with a gorilla on it and the slogan “I’m really really strong like daddy” is awesome)
Yep. Also who else is going to train the next generation of gold diggers and those self-esteem-less women who are keeping our countrys plastic surgeons in business.
That was awesome! Thanks for posting it, really funny. The spray bottle just killed me.
I watched the first season of T&T on Netflix. It was one of those things that once I saw the first show, I had to finish. While I was aware of these things, I hadn’t really comprehended the extent and expense to which people go. It’s appalling. And the idiot moms who insist the girls love it and if they didn’t they would stop immediately are so full of shit.
Drove past the Historical Society this afternoon.
Daughter: “Remember when we were Young Historians?”
Other Daughter: “Yeah, I loved that.”
Me: “You are both 21. You can join the Historical Society. I will drive you. We could even stop at Dairy Queen, which I suspect is really why you liked it.” Historical tidbit: It is across the street from the first free library in Illinois.
THIS is how you raise daughters.
I had to watch and analyze an episode of this dreadful show for my human development class. I had to take breaks and pace off my disgust at those parents. The thing is, those little girls would be getting the negativity and reinforcement of questionable values from those parents even if child beauty pageants did not exist. It would just be in dance classes (as someone mentioned), or in cheerleading, or gymnastics… the parents are the issue.
*They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
… Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.*
My daughter and I were discussing this show this very morning, as she was mesmerized by it while on a plane flight. Her question was 'who makes up the audience for this thing?". We figured it was 10% pageant moms, 10% little old ladies, 10% people on life support who can’t reach the remote, 10% people who’d died while watching the channel and hadn’t yet been discovered, 10% people who like to be outraged, 10% people who wanted to feel better about their parenting, and the remaininder were pedophiles.
There’s a certain percentage of people who catch it in passing whilst looking for something else to watch, make the mistake of going back and going “WTF?” and get absolutely gobsmacked by it. I know that’s why I watched a whole episode the first time.
You’re right, they do always say stuff like that. It’s a null argument - how can kids who have been doing this since they were babies make any kind of judgement on whether they like it or not? Also, when kids get all their positive interactions with their parents over stuff like this, they’re certainly not sophisticated enough to say, “I don’t actually love the pageants, but I love mommy paying attention to me and praising me.”
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