Sorry my blog has been so opinionated lately! It's these darn TV shows that get me all riled up. If you ever want to feel better about yourself as a parent, watch Toddlers in Tiaras on TLC. Have you heard of this?? It's about little girls in beauty pageants.
Disclaimer and I'm sorry if anyone thinks otherwise, but I am totally against beauty pageants for little girls. I would never let my daughter be in one. I think they embody the complete opposite of every value I want to teach her. So I probably shouldn't have watched this show in the first place.
So, in the one half of the one show I saw, several little girls were getting ready and competing in a Glitz pageant. They were 5-7 years old. The parents spent up to $2400 on their dresses. They had wigs, false teeth, false eyelashes, fake nails, crazy hooker-type makeup, and skimpy revealing clothes. When they were prancing around on stage, a half a step away from pole dancing, their parents were talking about how they were "showing their personalities." Um NO they weren't. They were doing the exact moves the parents taught them to do, while the parents were doing their exact routine offstage. Not to mention that every single mom who was on the show was hugely overweight. I thought this was interesting, just because it was so obvious that they were trying to live through their kids.
This whole thing is just a GREAT idea. Let's teach little girls that LOOKS are everything. Let's teach them their natural look isn't good enough for anyone, that they have to wear huge amounts of makeup, fake hair and teeth, to be good enough to win. Let's teach them that they have to be not only pretty, but prettier than everyone else to get anywhere in life. Let's teach them they have to show off their bodies to get attention. Yeah this is just FANTASTIC.
I have to admit I DO think my daughter is the most beautiful little girl who ever lived :) However, I think that her inner beauty is SO much more important. My job is to help her bring out her INNER beauty. I need to help form her conscience and teach her how to be loving, helpful, generous, joyful, kind, etc. I want her to realize that she's beautiful just the way God made her, that she doesn't need to try to be fake to be loved or get attention.
Ok I'm off my soapbox and I feel better :)
6 comments:
You go girl. It is so sad on so many levels. And I love what you said about your job. I am worried though because absolute strangers talk to us at length about RA's hair. Where she got the color, how grown women pay money for it, how beautiful she is... It is really hard for her not to be focused on it and hard for me not to re-think cutting it. Ahh, St. Catherine of Sienna pray for us!
Oh, I tivo that!! hahaha! It so freaking ridiculos! But I have to watch it!
I feel the same way you too, but still am a glutton for punishment. I can't believe we never talked about this! hahahaha
Dude, the ADVERTISEMENTS for that show send me into a rage.
No way in Hades I'd suffer through an episode...
-Cathy
okay, i have to admit that i'm addicted to T.LC. between the f.ood net.work and H.GTV they're three stations i watch almost exclusively. i can get sucked in to almost any show, but i CANNOT watch t.oddlers and t.iaras! i cannot stomach parents gussying up their daughters and having them strut their stuff on stage. it's disgusting.
girls have a tough enough road to hoe as teenagers! we don't have to give toddlers a complex!!!!
Oh yeah Jenni I can imagine. Everyone always says how cute M is with her curls too, and some people tried to get me to take her to this modeling agency... um NO.
One of my husband's old coworkers has a daughter who's 13. She's been in pageants for years already and she's won quite a few. Now she's getting into modeling. But I'm with you about teaching them what true beauty is. Good grief! Spending $800 on one dress for ONE pageant!? Because, heaven forbid, you should wear the same ballgown for more than one competition.
The other thing that bothers me is that this KID looks like she's 18 or OLDER. She doesn't look at all like a normal 13 year-old. It's sad.
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