Why is it that this blog is doing what it is sup­posed to do when my back is turn? What did I do the last time to make para­graphs?? ARRRGGHH!! So will try typ­ing some­thing here  and see if it works again…though I doubt it, as don’t know what I did!!
I was kid­ding in the title. I really don’t watch all that much TV and when I do, it is usu­ally home and gar­den chan­nels. Stay­ing up late the other night I caught a show that not only dis­gusted me, but rein­forced my desire to watch less TV.
The show was “Tiara’s and Tod­dlers” or some­thing like that. OH MY GOSH! It is about beauty pageants for lit­tle tykes. I thought, after all the insan­ity over Jon Benet, that they had out­lawed just such things but appar­ently not. I must have sat there with my mouth hang­ing open for 15 min­utes watch­ing this crap until I couldn’t take it any­more. This show, and these pageants, aren’t for the kids…as much as the mom’s want to say it is…they are a one hun­dred per­cent about the mom’s, their dreams, their reliv­ing some­thing they didn’t get as a kid or adult. The rea­son I say that is because, who in in their right minds would put a lit­tle kid thru this?? Some are “nat­ural” pageants where the kids wear no glitz and no makeup and those are bad enough, but then there are the oth­ers… full blown glitz, tan­ning sprays, elab­o­rate hairdo’s, fake eye­lashes, tal­ent, strut­ting their stuff…it was dis­gust­ing!! They showed these lit­tle girls with rooms full of rib­bons and tro­phies. One mom prompted her lit­tle girl to say “We love win­ning tro­phies” and when the lit­tle girl wouldn’t copy what she said she, unbe­liev­ably, asked the lit­tle girl ” Why won’t you say that? Come on, you need to say, it!”  Why do they do this? I don’t get it! What are we teach­ing these girls? And we won­der why girls all over Amer­ica have eat­ing dis­or­ders and body image prob­lems when we start them at TWO in a “beauty” pageant? Those girls wouldn’t have a clue about pageants if their moms weren’t forc­ing it on them. Every mom said they prac­tice at least an hour a day mak­ing the kids walk right, and smile right, and sashay right…they said the judges are bru­tal. Huh? The judges should be strung up, but they are prob­a­bly moms of for­mer con­tes­tants who see this as a “won­der­ful learn­ing expe­ri­ence” for their kids.  Can I just say that a “won­der­ful learn­ing expe­ri­ence” is a mom build­ing a tent in the liv­ing room with them, rolling around in the grass with them after a game of tag, sit­ting and read­ing to them, going for walks at the zoo…not reliv­ing a fan­tasy dream of your own!! I felt the sor­ri­est for a lit­tle two year old who, when she was born, the mom said, “We have us a beauty pageant baby!!” She her­self was once a beauty con­tes­tant win­ner. That two year old was NOT hav­ing it. The mom was try­ing to get her to walk to “stars” on the grass… the kid wouldn’t do it. She wanted to run and play, but mom brought her back again and again. Clips from the actual event showed the kid hav­ing melt down…screaming, cry­ing, and the mom, hold­ing this kid who is slap­ping her face because she wants down and doesn’t want to do it say­ing, “We’ll just do the best we can, she needs the expe­ri­ence”. Well, I can­not say on this pub­lic blog what I really want to say to that. I would be kicked off the inter­net. And why aren’t the dad’s weigh­ing in on this? Why aren’t they putting their foot down and say­ing NO? Come on people.…this is com­plete crazi­ness!! Let your kids be kids. Stop mak­ing them into adults and sex­u­al­iz­ing them for all the world to see for a lit­tle fame and glory for your­self. It bor­ders on child abuse. We need to write our con­gress peo­ple and get this prac­tice stopped.  I hope you will join me in doing so.