I'm Addicted to Toddlers in Tiaras: It's Kind of Like Watching a Car Crash (I can't look away)

 So I recently moved and accidentally have free illegal cable. woops!  I also work from home. On my couch. In my living room. In front of the teevee. This means unlimited access to TLC and the horrendously addictive and awfully disturbing Toddlers in Tiaras.

Have you seen this show? I think the title is pretty self explanatory, but just for your eye-burning gut-wrenching heart-bleeding vomit-inducing pleasure check out some of these vids on youtube.

I guess I always knew that beauty pageants, even for young girls, existed, but I never realized the extent of it. The airbrushing, the fake teeth, the hair extensions, and false eyelashes, etc. 

The most disturbing part truly is the parents of these kids. I feel as though many of these middle aged moms have placed all of their own desires, anxieties, complexes and insecurities into their toddlers, and have hypersexualized them in a way that reflects their own need to be loved and desired. 

I have talked before how often young girls are encouraged to find their worth in their appearance whereas boys in their intellect or abilities. Many disagree with my comments or reflections on the processes of gendering children, and my argument is not that we NOT gender children necessarily, but what aspects of gendering are worthwhile or important? What aspect of gendering - in the sense of what are the objectives of the gendering process - do we need to retain and why? What value do pageants have in our society? What are the social objectives of women/babies finding their entire worth in their sex/body? Intense questions I know, but pretty important ones. So many people argue that gendering is necessary to our society, but maybe we need to be more reflexive about what that entails.

However, in happier news, and quite to the contrary, Jezebel reports:

"Three US Girls beat out nearly 7,500 other entrants in Google's first-ever international science fair. The grand prize winner, Shree Bose, apparently 'discovered a way to improve ovarian cancer treatment for patients wen they have built up a resistance to certain chemotherapy drugs.' She's won a $50,000 scholarship, an internship with the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and a trip to the Galapagos."

That's more like it. My dream world? More science fair competitions and fewer beauty pageants.