"As opposed to Planet Look At Me, Look At Me"

So overall I usually hate reality television and my position on hating it was cemented the other day when I watched an episode of "Toddlers and Tiaras." A little background on how I even got to watching this show; iTunes often has free stuff you can download and a couple of weeks ago, they had a couple of season premiers for free. Although most of them were things I don't watch, I saw the season premier for season 3 of "Toddlers and Tiaras" and I randomly decided to download it. I watched it earlier this week and holy crap, I couldn't believe the drama. Since I was in such shock at how crazy everyone on the show was, I hurriedly started to watch the first season as well. I almost died of shock. One of the moms had a two-year old daughter that she started putting in pageants when she was 6 months old. The mom put her daughter in pageants because the mom was in pageants before she got married. She was spray-tanning this little girl and spending 800 dollars on her evening wear dress. I never even spent that much on a prom dress!!! And how many times do you think that this little girl can actually wear this dress before she grows out of it?

There were some older girls that seemed to be having a good time but one of the 6 year-old's comments was awesome. When they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, "I want to be a cheerleader because they show their bellies and I like showing my belly." One of the moms didn't like going out to get her daughter spray-tanned so they bought a spray tanning gun (for lack of a better description) to do it at home. These girls have fake teeth that they regularly get refitted and more hairpieces than I think any one person should have.

Then my favorite part of all the episodes, the parents. Talk about trying to accomplish your unfulfilled dreams through your children. The mother of the two-year old was disappointed because her daughter only got second-runner up and said she should have gone to a football game with her husband instead of her daughter being so disappointed. This is the same mother who said she thought that all these pageants she was putting her daughter in would help her to build character (a.k.a. as long as she wins, she's learning something). Then there was this dad who had a two year-old that had basically done all the things the previous mother mentioned did and when his two-year old got first-runner up in her division, he said "She didn't win anything. Now I need to go and comfort my girl." Since the two-year old is concerned because her crown is slightly smaller than the girl who won the division. And then, there is my favorite parent of all the episodes that I've watched. The mother of a four-year old girl who said at the beginning of the episode that "We basically let her do what she want when she wants so that she doesn't feel forced into these pageants." The whole episode the girl is running around like a crazy person, screaming and yelling and refusing to do anything but once she gets on the stage, she actually performs rather well. And by the end of the episode, the mom says "I'm really hoping that doing these pageants will teach her discipline." Right, because that's definitely not your job as her mother, right?

But the overall favorite recurring theme from these episodes expressed by pretty much every parent is "As soon as (insert name with horrendously difficult spelling here) tells me she doesn't want to do pageants anymore, we'll stop." Because two-year olds can tell you 'no' when you drag them to these pageants and what 5 to 7 year-old is going to say 'no' when you put them in pretty dresses, let them go tanning, and give into their every whim as long as they do these pageants? I just love how real reality TV is.