Curious Crow

Pageants Prove Creepy

If any of you have ever wondered about TLC’s reality show “Toddlers & Tiaras,” I can sum it up for you: It’s where a bunch of mothers, usually from the South, dress up their daughters like little hoochie mamas and enter them in beauty pageants. In a word: creepy.

If you’ve missed out on the show, it’s scarier than you think. I know how scary it is because I’ve watched several episodes in the past couple of weeks.

So how bad is it? The pageant girls, who are anywhere from a few months up to 11 years old, aren’t just wearing a little makeup and getting their hair teased. To get ready for these pageants, the girls diet, get fake tans, fake fingernails and even fake toenails. But the thing that blew my mind was that these girls have fake teeth. They call them flippers, and they’re used to cover up the front teeth of the girls who have either lost teeth or whose teeth aren’t perfectly straight, or are small. You know, normal kid teeth! On pageant day, their faces are encrusted with makeup and they sport fake eyelashes that are so long it looks like their poor little eyes are being attacked by giant, furry black spiders. Each girl’s hair is then amplified with hairpieces and hairspray until it ends up being so jacked up to Jesus that Pentecostal grandmothers all over the South are in awe.

After the pageant moms get their daughters’ heads looking like odd, little shrunken Snooki heads, they stuff the girls into rhinestone bedazzled dresses that cost more than a lot of people make in a month. For the talent or casual wear portion of the pageant, the girls may take the stage in satin hot pants and a sequined crop top, which is the perfect outfit for some of the dance moves these girls pull off.

No 7-year-old girl should be on stage doing a dance routine that would make a stripper blush.

In between the prancing and dancing, the girls get crankier and more tired as the day goes on. But no worries, because Mom is close by with some “pageant crack” or “special juice” to get their daughters through the tough times. In actuality, “Pageant crack” is Pixie Sticks, which the girls down like it really is crack. After letting her daughter knock back 14 Pixie Sticks, one of the mothers complained “She’s acting so silly today. I don’t know what’s wrong with her.” Yeah, that one’s a real mystery, lady.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABzMAuI1vj0[/youtube]

The “special juice” looks to be most often Mountain Dew, but one extra special Georgia mother added Red Bull to it for her 6-year-old daughter and called it “Go Go Juice.” She said that she tried the pageant crack, but after 15 bags of Pixie sticks during one pageant, it just didn’t work for her daughter. Wow! If you’re feeding your child Go Go Juice or 15 bags of Pixie Sticks in one day, you are a clinical idiot.

As if it’s not bad enough that these mothers are dressing up their daughters to look like refugees from Trampskankistan, they then parade them on stage and call it “beauty.” Does anyone else think this could be damaging to a young girl’s self-worth?

To make matters even worse, some of the mothers have a weird competition thing going on with their daughters. Playfully wanting to beat your daughter at Candy Land is one thing, but competing with your daughter to see which one of you can look more like your stage name should be Candy Land is disturbing.

WATCH PAGEANT MOMS AND THEIR DAUGHTERS ON ANDERSON COOPER!

Rachel Birdsell is a freelance writer, artist and semi-professional cat wrangler. Feel free to drop her a note at rabirdsell@gmail.com

 

Categories: Commentary