It's freaky.
None of the moms looked like they had money to spare, and one of them said it had cost them $15,000 to enter, get the costumes, and travel to this particular pageant. Her daughter, age 6, had been doing pageants for 4 years and had won, over the years, something like $10,000, according to the mom. Had she really? I'm sure I don't know. She had a lot of sparkly crowns. This pageant had a cash prize for the top winner, but don't remember how much.
This particular little girl, without all the glitz, was a darling child, blond and normal looking as fresh made apple pie. After the hair, the makeup, the flashy clothes, she had an uncanny and chilling resemblance to JonBenet Ramsey. This little girl was very upfront that she liked the swimsuit category (a swimsuit category for little children!?) because she got to wear her bikini (which, if I recall correctly, cost $300, maybe more) because it "shows my stomach and I get to shake my butt."
There was also a two-year-old who cried and whined through the entire show, and when they put her ruffly swimsuit on her cried for her mom to "It hurts, take it off, take it off." Needless to say, it didn't come off. And then when she was on stage, she saw all the crowns and sashes on a nearby table and said over and over, "I want a present, I want a present..." How do you explain to a two-year old that the "presents" that are so close, have to be awarded? Mom promised her one if she "did good." Somehow, I just think that a 24-four-month-old brain is going to have trouble with that concept.
Another lady had twins and had dresses picked out for them--and then found out they cost $500 each! Mom's home sewing to the rescue! I think this was their first pageant, and they did actually seem to have fun.
I felt sorry for the moms at the end, though. Constant delays put the pageant two or three hours behind schedule, and then at the end when the crowning too place, they found out from a stunned spokesperson that the pageant director had taken the money and skipped out! The fees, the expensive costumes, makeup artists, hair artists, travel and lodging expenses were all for nothing.
And, of course, according to the mothers "the wrong one" won the top title and the judges were either crazy or blind. (The winner had a Pyrrhic victory at best, since there was no money to award.)
I mean, could any novelist out there come up with this stuff?
It would be interesting to know if the missing director was found and if she ever made restitution of the money she made off with. I wonder if the series will follow up with it. I'll never know because I will probably never watch it again
Related topic:
There is a comment site somewhere that I ran across, where the comments are horribly snarky. While abhorring what they see as child abuse and exploitation, some of them also refer to those little girls as "whores in training" and like terms, which I think is nasty and uncalled for. They also flat out state that the male judges are pedophiles, which is also uncalled for. There are no doubt pedophiles who avidly follow the pageants, but to make such an accusation--anonymously, of course!--is also uncalled for and is slander. Maybe some of them are; I wouldn't know, and neither do their accusers. But it's wrong to accuse someone anonymously of such a horrible thing, and in some cases the statement is accompanied by a photo. This comment forum is as upsetting as the show. Internet anonymity lets a person get away with saying anything they like about anyone, apparently.
