Gen X Journey

I watched a horror show last night. Wasn’t called Night of Blood Sucking Vampires or the like. No it was called Toddlers and Tiarasand it was truly shocking. Give me a vampire any day.

The show (and it’s part of a series) followed three little girls on their paths to the Tiny Miss USA pageant. Who knew there was such a thing? We’re not really into beauty contests here in Australia. I think if anyone tried to organise a children’s beauty contest in Oz that all sort of “ists” would beat down their doors. And a good thing too. It’s bad enough that we have children with body issues. Try throwing some good old self loathing about their looks. Nothing good can come of it.

Anyway back to Toddlers and Tiaras. Bayleigh, McKenzie and Kragan (no I am not making up these names) go toe to toe for the big prize. To win this prize they are fake tanned, fake eyelashed, fake fingernailed, fake toothed, faked smiled and fake personalitied. It’s tragic to watch and even more tragic that their parents encourage, condone and enable the whole process.

Now I know I’m judging (again) but what is with these parents? Quite frankly most of them look like they have the arse out of their mom jeans and don’t have a spare dollar to their name. With money being tight I think the last thing I’d spend my grocery bill on is a fake tan for a 5-year-old, but that’s just me.

Personally I think a lot of them are either

•  a) attention seekers
•  b) failed beauty contestants
• c) weird or
• d) all of the above.

These parents whoop and yahoo while their children strut around on stage, all the while mimicking the dance movements and using secret code words to remind the children to smile, make pretty faces and maintain good eye contact with the judges.

Ahh the judges. A children’s beauty contest must be the last and only bastion for a grown man to openly look at young girls with big hair strutting around in bikinis (and frankly writing that sentence is disturbing) without being queried about paedophilic tendencies.

Frankly I don’t know a man who could do this job or even want to. If he did, I wouldn’t be leaving my children unattended in his presence. But anyway our male judge has a big input into deciding who win titles such as Sweetest Face, Prettiest Eyes and Bathing Beauty.

Well it’s all pretty cut-throat and prestigious even though the events are run in seedy little room in hotel with hand-painted signs and big teddy bears as prizes. It’s very similar to what was shown in Little Miss Sunshine, the movie that was cutting and ironic in it’s handling of the child beauty scene.

Anyway in summary I’d like to share with you some more baby beauty contestant names. I’m not making any of these up. They are priceless and well frankly if you name your little princess like this, there really is only one path for them, and that may possibly be adult movies.

So here’s my top ten Baby Beauty Queen names .

1. Sparkle
2. Kailee
3. Skylar
4. Tootie
5. Elixis
6. Daylee
7. Aja
8. Marleigh
9. Destiny
10. Essence  Image