Toddlers + Tiaras = Troubling

I was channel surfing.  I do this on occasion.  Not as often as my husband, but I will admit to it.  Ran across the program “Toddlers and Tiaras.”  The title makes me cringe.  It's a program, if you're not familiar with it, about pageants.  For little girls.  Baby girls from one year old to girls who are seven, eight, and nine.  I got to listening to the girls and their moms and was almost in tears.  This reaction varied with anger, sympathy, and abject horror.  Little girls, little girls.  Speaking and acting like something I'm not even sure I have words for.

Quoting a mom, “This is war.”  She was speaking about the competition.  A little girl, about nine, “I'm going to kick her butt.”  A mom to her daughter, seven years old, “Put your flipper (a dental appliance that looks like perfect pearly whites) back in, your teeth are hideous.”  A year or so ago a mother was raked over the coals in the media because she had her daughter botoxed.  Ack!  My heart is not okay with this.

As a mom of girls, I really want to make sure that I am bringing them up with a healthy sense of self and a level headed confidence that will get them through the rough patches they are sure to face.  I certainly don't want to be the cause of them having body hang-ups and low self esteem.  On what planet did it become okay to criticize your daughter's teeth?  What next?  A girdle to hold in the baby fat?  Good grief!  I can't even wrap my head around the damage that is being done to these little girls.  They're criticizing each other in the same way their moms are criticizing them.  Granted, I do need to give credit to the program editors.   I expect they are putting the show together to evoke reactions like mine, but seriously, how is this okay on any level.

So taking this all in, mulling it around, and writing it down, has made me even more determined to grow my girls well, the best I can, with what I'm given.  Checking myself, making sure that I am being a positive example for them, regardless of how I feel about myself.  Working really hard at putting my hang-ups aside to ensure that I don't pass them on to my girls.

I guess I would have to say that, in a strange way, I am grateful for the opportunity to see a world completely different from my own.  These pageants are those families lives.  They live and breathe for the crowns available to be won based on criteria that, for all intents and purposes, is so unimportant.   I am grateful that I have the ability to grow my girls with biblical principles and not be persecuted for it.   To teach them that life is about more than lipgloss and looking pretty.