Guilty Pleasure Television: Toddlers and Tiaras

By Sherrie Gulmahamad on August 26th, 2009

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Do you know what a flipper is?  Have you ever used butt paste?  Have you ever worn a wig that makes you 1-2 inches taller than you ought to be?  Do you know what pretty feet are?  Have you ever cried after losing Prettiest Face?  Alright, are you about 5 years old, and a star of TLC’s reality show Toddlers & Tiaras? If so, are you supposed to be on the internet, little girl?  Chances are you’re supposed to be practicing your bathing suit routine.

Yes, indeed, I am addicted to one of the most queasy reality shows on television!  I can’t turn away from the training, the tantrums, the self-tanning (YES, self-tanning on a 4 year old) and tender moments interspersed.  It seems strangely related to the world of drag – lots of glitz, lots of wigs and fake eyelashes, but in this world, mom and dad are often involved!  It’s drag for tiny girls. Am I crazy? Yeah, probably.  I’ve watched 2 seasons of this show and what have I learned?  Here are some phrases that seem to be repeated over and over again, sometimes uttered defensively and proudly or quite sheepishly.

1) “We swear, we didn’t start out doing glitz pageants!”
Many of these parents started out in the natural beauty pageants and when they saw their little girl winning prize after prize, they started experimenting with more and more makeup, often culminating in the “flipper”, an oral device that helps improve and emphasize a little girl’s smile – a kind of denture for a small child.

2) “It gives her so much confidence!”
And there is plenty of truth to this.  When I was 7 years old there would be no way I’d stand up in front of a room full of strangers, tell them what my favorite dessert is, all the while posing as naturally as possible in a huge poofy dress.  Judges featured on the show frequently claim to reward personality over poise and stage tricks, so these little girls do learn how to “be themselves”, in between being subjected to curling irons and eyebrow pluckings…

3) “When she says she doesn’t want to do it anymore, we won’t make her.”
This sounds like a mostly sincere statement when uttered by the many parents of Toddlers & Tiaras, but we don’t ever see the proof of this. Nearly every little girl seems fully addicted to the spotlight and the thrill of competition.  They often cry when the family car is being packed up to head on home after a crowning session or elimination round.

4) “We do it together as a family!”
It’s true. Most of these little pageant girls come armed with a mom and a dad, and if dad is MIA, it’s usually mom and grandma.  Siblings are usually dragged along to clap and take photos.  In a recent episode, a much older brother felt the need to be a buffer between his kid sister and his demanding mother by lending a little comic relief to her rigorous pageant prep sessions.  When these little girls pull off the simplest of maneuvers, they are greated by triumphant family members who usually congratulate them and high five them, or console them whole-heartedly when they think they’ve failed.

Well!  That didn’t sound all that bad, right?  Still, how about a few good rebuttals:

1) What’s going to happen to these little girls when they grow up and aren’t so “cute” anymore?
Does the confidence about your beauty and general cuteness carry over into the classroom?  They tend to focus on the little girls like sports contenders and academics is an entire world never mentioned in these episodes.

2) Are all these people just breeding a species of girls who believe that most of their self worth lies in their beauty or ability to make a judge smile?
One of the creepiest moments on the show was when one of the little contestents realized that she could make the one male judge smile the most.

3) Are we just making some of them plum crazy?
A winner at the National Gold Coast pageant was 4 years old and was treated to a marathon 3-4 hour session at a salon, encouraged constantly by a loving father who reiterated with her, and with the audience, that his little girl was a princess and deserved it.  A contestant in the Queens and Kings of America pageant literally would get into character for her pageants and would only answer to her 2nd name “Tootie”. That’s not so different from a Method actor or actress, but this little girl would talk about her stage persona Tootie as though she really were another girl.

4)  Sherrie, shouldn’t you be reading a book or playing the guitar or washing the dishes or anything else but watching these strange people smear blue eyeshadow on little kids?
Yeah, the answer is yeah. Yes.

This show treads a fine diplomatic line in making sure they only make these people look bad when they are acting entirely bad.  It treats the parents and children with respect as though they are athletic competitors.

But that’s just the thing –  can a little girl learn the same life lessons about ambition and achievement by playing soccer or doing gymnastics, instead of introducing them much too early to the heartbreaking pressure of beauty standards?  Or are we taking this way too seriously, it’s just lip gloss and frilly socks?  How would you feel to find out your best friend or sister was entering a small child, or even a baby that can’t walk, into the pageant world?  And heck, do you even have the stomach to watch!?