With the hit reality show Toddlers & Tiaras, TLC has taken a small segment of society and placed it in the spotlight for all to see. This time, instead of hoarders or extreme couponers, the focus is on a decidedly more innocent group: little girls. Likened to human "baby dolls," these young girls compete in beauty pageants throughout the United States, bringing the nation a new form of drama.
These real-life performances involving impressionable children have stricken audiences' faces with absolute horror, disdainful disgust - and undeniable entertainment.
Since Toddlers & Tiaras premiered in 2009, viewers have enjoyed the spectacle of screaming children hyped up on enormous amounts of sugar and soda. Each episode follows three contestants from their preparatory process through the pageant's award ceremony. Yet the children prancing hysterically across the stage with makeup caked on their faces are not even the main entertainment. That honor goes to the parents who have forced these poor children into the competitions. Although a select few of the youthful contestants participate in pageants by their own free will, many children are vehemently opposed to the process and throw comically over-the-top tantrums - outbursts which are rewarded with bribes of cookies and special treats, rather than actual parental guidance.
Without explicitly saying so - T&T lacks a narrator - the show hammers home an irrefutable point: Child beauty pageants create spoiled and irreconcilably bratty children. TLC has cut and pasted portions of its extensive material on each contestant to make the parents look like over-possessive fools and the children like bratty snobs. For instance, a parent in a recent episode said during an interview that her daughter "loves to be in pageants," and TLC immediately cut to a scene in a tanning salon showing the child kicking and screaming that she "hates pageants" and "wants to go home." The series continues in this manner, with contestants crying about constantly practicing their routines, visiting the nail salon, plucking their eyebrows and getting their hair and makeup done before the show. At the actual performance, which encompasses about a third of the hour-long episode, each contestant takes her turn either hoping she gets the biggest crown or petulantly insisting to her mama that she better be getting it.
Although Toddlers & Tiaras undoubtedly deserves a spot on the guilty pleasures list, it should be noted that the guiltiness of this pleasure comes at a morally questionable cost. For the high entertainment value comes at the expense of the children featured on the show. Despite this, I know I am not the only one who watches it and waits to gasp at the girls' before and after pictures when they first walk out on stage. With all of its shameless exhibitionism, Toddler & Tiaras is like Jersey Shore for children and, for better or worse, both shows' popularity ensures that they aren't going anywhere for a while.
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