It would appear that we are not the only people celebrating Richard Gere’s birthday. This week’s Toddlers & Tiaras featured a three year-old named Paisley (a stage name, I presume) doing a Pretty Woman tribute. The Parents Television Council (and a bunch of other people) are not impressed.
Paisley’s mother explained her side to Entertainment Weekly:
She says that if people saw Paisley’s entire routine, which later has her daughter dressed as Roberts’ reformed character in a demure brown dress, they wouldn’t have quite the same outrage.
“I’m amazed it’s caused this much of a frenzy,” Dickey says. “The judges loved it. Everybody except one particular mom went nuts over it. It was the cutest thing ever. It was very innocent. A lot probably would have been different if they aired the whole entire routine instead of just the hooker part.”
“Just the hooker part”? Am I looking at a tiny little Beverly Wilshire Hotel front? “A demure brown dress”? Why would anything that someone who has barely graduated from shitting in a diaper is wearing need to be clarified as “demure”? The judges did love the routine because young Paisley won this particular pageant. Now her mother plans to auction the mini-ho getup and donate the proceeds to… an anti-abortion organization.
I always joke that the kids that are seen on Toddlers and Tiaras are actually getting prepped for their appearances on 16 and Pregnant, about ten years later, and then Intervention, after that. Maybe they make it to Hoarders if they live that long.
Over-sexing kids is just….precious, aint it?
You have to admire a mother who drops all that pageant pretense and goes straight for the jugular. Good on this woman, for holding a mirror up to folks that don’t much like reflection.
Eh, it just makes me go, ‘Adults, what is wrong with their heads that they need to project their shit onto children’. I mean, that little girl is just having a nice time dressing in funny tall shiny boots and a yellow wig – I can’t imagine she’s going to be traumatised for life at having been dressed up like a tiny ho-doll.
I am a bit unnerved at (a) the effort that has gone into the miniature perfect replica of Julia Roberts’s hooker dress and (b) the internalisation of that ‘save the girls from being prostitutes’ narrative to the extent that mothers are having their tiny daughter act it out, but I can’t find anything disturbing in the ‘ooh hey people are looking!’ innocence on that little girl’s face. She’s just fine.
I read up a little bit on this show and the parents are also known to juice up their kids with redbull and coke so that they can practice past bedtime and in general, push their kids to disturbing limits of dress-up and competition.
Ashton Kutcher, this is something for you to freak out on.
[…] Dickey, the mom who dressed her 3-year old daughter up as a prostitute for Toddlers and Tiaras, is still defending her costume choice: “It was comical — it was meant […]