Relocating "Kelleywood" this summer has been a daunting task. In fact, it has left me feeling somewhat crankier than usual. Just when I was about to slide down that slippery slope into the throws of a full-blown depression, what was there to pull me out but those dazzling kinder-whores on "Toddlers and Tiaras".
Last week I was so blue, so sad that the padded boobs and behind of a Dolly Parton costume formerly worn by a pint-size beauty queen's mommy dearest barely raised and exhausted sigh. Other than the revelation that this sort of lunacy might well be hereditary, I was fairly non-plussed. Seriously, haven't we seen it all before -- the mouthful of Chicklets "flipper", the spray tanning of four year-olds, the pious pleading to almighty Jesus that so-and-so's little contestant win that crown. Amen.
Then little Paisley's mommy had the incredible and highly questionable inspiration to dress her little darlin' as Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman". Before my brain was able to process the thought: "Wasn't Julia Roberts a hooker in that movie?", little Paisley was parading about in a pair of thigh high boots and a blonde hooker wig. Oh dear.
The creep factor of kiddie pageants has always been sort of high. I was astonished that there was not a major outcry when last year's little Mia donned a miniature Madonna cone-bra and strutted her stuff. Paisley's mom, in an effort to up the ante on outrageous and over-the-top, tarted-up her toddler in Julia Robert's hooker dress from "Pretty Woman". The one she wears when Richard Gere pays for a B.J. Paisley's mother claims not to have "understood" "Pretty Woman", but had her daughter change into the brown polka-dot dress having been "reformed". If Paisley's mom didn't get that "Pretty Woman" was about a hooker, just WHAT did she thing Julia Roberts was reforming from? Little Paisley's routine won her a "Grand Supreme" title, so I anticipate a Marilyn Chambers get-up on our next winner.
Now there is the predictable media outrage and Paisley's mom has put her little darling's dress up for auction to benefit a right-to-life group -- as if to say: "Everyone knows those pro-choice people are the REAL whores." So predictable.
The pageant mom's are the first to cry: "You can't judge us", but that is exactly what they are asking people to do to their children. I doubt little Paisley had a clue as to what she was doing dressed in her little prosti-tot outfit-of-choice, prancing about the stage in thigh-high boots, but mom knew. That is the really big problem with these pageants because very little of it is about the children. It is all about the moms and their willingness to exploit their children in the name of fame.
