And the winner is??

What.

The.

Fuck???

I’ve struggled with sleep lately, but there are moments when my inability to catch my winks at night has the potential to create future nightmares of epic proportions.  So it is when I get to channel surfing and see a massive disaster like Toddlers and Tiaras.

When is it ever okay to dress up a four year-old like a hooker (fake eyelashes and heavy eyeliner, low-cutting, short-skirted dresses, and big, crazy, 80’s slutty-girl hair) and send her out on stage to win a supposed “beauty pageant”?

Crazy stage moms (and dads)?  They are in ample supply here, folks.  Many of them not that attractive themselves, you can see they are trying to vicariously live out their own pageant dreams through their way too young to be told to “shake your butt, but not like a stripper” children. 

Seriously??  Should a four year-old even know what a stripper is let alone know how she should shake her booty just right so the kid won’t cross that invisible boundary of decorum and good taste??

Look.  I’m not completely against the whole pageant thing.  I did the Junior Miss thing back in the day.  Thing is I was a junior…in HIGH SCHOOL.  There were scholarships involved.  But the point is that I was old enough to apply my own fake lashes, and I actually had real boobies and nice gams to put in the dress I borrowed from my friend Jill.  Oh, and let’s not forget that it actually was the 1980’s, so my big ole poof hair was era appropriate.

My problem isn’t the pageant idea; it’s when you take a toddler and dress her like a hoochiemama and try to pretend that the whole sitch isn’t a very messed up train wreck.  Let her look like a kid and have her do kid things because, well, she IS one.

Alaska just finished her striptease routine where she rips her jacket off and swings it around her head, all the while spinning and shaking her booty, but, naturally NOT like a stripper—even though she technically is acting out that role, all in front of the many grown males in the audience.  My mouth is agape.  (Not sure if this is because of the striptease or the fact that her name is perfect for the stripper she is playing out at the moment.  *shakes head*  I’m at a loss here.)

Yeah, then I started thinking.  What are these little girls going to be like when they reach adulthood?  Will they ever believe that it’s okay to walk through their world without wearing make-up?  Will they figure that they have to use their looks/sex to get what they want in life?  Or worse, that what is important is how you look not who you are, particularly as a woman?  As a card carrying member of NOW, I find the whole thing most disturbing.

Well, I gotta flip channels again for my own sanity and safety.  Maybe comedy channel has something on that will make the disgust fade away, though I doubt it…