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TLC really needs to change its name

Sometimes it's hard to be woman.

If you’ve ever dreamed of spray painting your toddler orange, gluing their clothing to their butt cheeks, then parading them around in front of an audience of warped adults and their children, then this is the show for you–and possibly Gary Glitter.  The show first aired in January of this year, but is now being rerun. I never really paid much attention to it until now, and now that I have I’m, well, “appalled” is the only word that comes to mind.  For those who have never heard of it, here’s a blurb from TLC:

On any given weekend, on stages across the country, little girls and boys parade around wearing makeup, false eyelashes, spray tans and fake hair to be judged on their beauty, personality and costumes. Toddlers & Tiaras follows families on their quest for sparkly crowns, big titles, and lots of cash.

The preparation is intense as it gets down to the final week before the pageant. From hair and nail appointments, to finishing touches on gowns and suits, to numerous coaching sessions or rehearsals, each child preps for their performance. But once at the pageant, it’s all up to the judges and drama ensues when every parent wants to prove that their child is beautiful.

At first it sounded like they were condemning the baby pageant circuit,  but that was only because I saw these circuses of vicarious achievement and validation as exploitative events  that promote the very opposite ideals I would hope people would instill in their children.  There’s no way I could make it through this entire series without my head exploding from anger, and many of you might be the same, but the channel is still technically The Learning Channel, which means we have to take something away from it, so here’s a quick rundown of the things I learned.

• You can actually make a two-year old look slutty.
• Children look frightening with spray-on tans.
• If you really work at it, you can make a toddler’s hair bigger than her body.
• Blue eye-shadow ages you, even when you’re 3.
• Baby tooth loss is so embarrassing that parents will make their pageant babies wear partial dentures called “flippers” to hide their missing (or “imperfect”) teeth during pageants–because you wouldn’t want to disrupt that pedophilic fantasy.
• There are a lot of parents out there who need therapy.
• Their children will follow suit.

I know this all sounds a bit unbelievable, so here’s a video (double click on it as embedding is disabled).  To witness even more fuckeduppedness, you can watch a series of segments on TLC.

(Thanks, Jess and Michael!)