It also is a way to get through unpleasant tasks – building Ikea furniture, sorting through that mound of papers I keep needing to sort through, even cleaning out my closet in my parents house full of memories from the first 20-odd years of my life.
So, channeling Dan Savage and my own honed ranting ability, I must confess how shocked and, well, shocked I was to see this tv show called “Toddlers and Tiaras” on TLC today. Yes, there is a show that is about beauty queens under the age of 9. This episode followed a few lovely “ladies” whose ages ranged from 3 to I think 6?
Every scene brought new horror. The mother who says that sometimes you have to be tough, but she supports her daughter and really just wants to be a supportive mother. Her daughter is 3. And is told that her “smile is fake” and that she “won’t win with a fake smile” repeatedly. This girl also gets fake spray tanning done, wears fake hair… has a makeup artist…
Perhaps I’m so riled because these women (there don’t seem to be many dads pushing their young daughters to be beauty queens that I could see) spend OBSCENE amounts of money on their little girls. Dresses, teachers, tanning, hair, nails, entry fees – thousands of dollars. One had spent over $35,000 for the initial “investment” of beauty shots, costumes, etc. Ummm, why don’t you invest that in her college fund? Or make a savings account for future need, a nest egg so that she has options when she finishes high school? Or buy her a toy tiara or two?
Another girl was distinctly bratty, spoiled totally and completely with a-need-to-win complex. She flounced, she rebelled, she fussed. Her mother said over and over “She has a lot of personality.” No. She is stubborn and spoiled and you encourage this behavior. I want to see the show in 10 years where the girls have eating disorders, body image issues, sleep with everything that breathes, get into partying, drugs, alcohol and other acts of rebellion and hear the mothers say they just "don’t understand" what could have caused this. Staring earnestly into the camera: "I’m a good mother, I’ve supported her decisions but I don’t get why she doesn’t think she can ever be good enough."
I’m positive that it was the girls themselves, naturally, who proposed the idea of being mini beauty queens to their mothers. Not the other way around. That instead of praise for what’s been accomplished, the mothers all seemed to hold their breath for the next bigger, better prize. Even though several of them admitted they didn’t understand how the crowning system worked – they still wanted that next big one.
The sight of the little girls wearing rhinestone crowns literally almost half their size… there are no words. Well, there are some. But they aren’t very complimentary ones. These rooms decorated with crowns, sashes, glitter and glitz – the girl who is the youngest of 8 and the only daughter – what are these girls learning about self-worth and looks?
That they obviously go hand and hand.
Perhaps that’s not so insidious, one could say. Our society has long honored the beautiful woman over the plain, over the smart, over the athletic (unless she is both/and of course). These girls are no worse than others who have mothers who push them to have boyfriends at 8, to idolize the Barbie image, to, to, to… I’m still reeling from the images of that show though.
Exploitation anyone?
Because I think it’s wrong. I don’t understand how those judges can do their job, how folks can think that this is a good idea. And I probably never will.
But at least my sister and I can agree that whatever weird or potentially terrible things our parents may have done to us in our youth (when she writes her life story you’ll get all the gory details) that was one thing that they didn’t do – we weren’t toddler beauty queens.
I made the mistake of telling them this. Their response: there are always the grandchildren.
