and you wonder why...
i'm in awe. shock and awe. today was my "lounge" day. the one saturday i reserved to do nothing but stay in my comfortable clothes and paint. i mark these days on my calendar, since usually at this time of the year i am frantically trying to write the oodles of papers i pushed back or studying for the one last test professors love to insert right before finals. i value the days where i can just sit with my ipod fully charged with my favorite tunes and paint up a colorful storm. today that didn't happen, well...it hasn't happened yet. no, because i turned on the television. (this is where the shock and awe happened) i turned to vh1 and there was this show on it about child pageants, sort of a "behind the scenes" of these events. they follow a group of families around video taping their prep and planning it takes to participate. i was disgusted. these four and five year old girls were getting mystic tans. FIVE YEARS OLD! i'm twenty one and those things scare the hell out of me. these girls spend hours and hours of their childhood time learning dance routines. they call it Pro-AM. it's supposed to be a modelling while dancing act. these girls are dressed in their sequined belly baring neon green dance outfits and strike these poses. the director of Pro-AM said the girls always want to dance like they do in the music videos, like britney spears and christina aguilera. ok, being of stable feminist mind- i must say that i have watched the videos they are referring to over the course of my young life and i must say that 3/4 of the time i feel like i should have gotten an STD just watching it. what are these girls doing watching that crap at 6 years old?! like hell i'll let my kids watch that!! what sort of role models are these children getting?! the mothers are the toppers of it all though. living vicariously through your just out of diapers daughter is something i should be able to do a case study on when i get into graduate school. i might actually look into that. i don't know what it's been about me on my high horse...but this was just like rubbing sand paper on an open nerve. i guess it could be because one of my best friends matthew works with internet crimes against children. so, i am updated weekly on the arrests he's made relating to soliciting minors over the internet. he has a myspace page dedicated to it. (www.myspace.com/icacla) so, these mothers are, in a way, sticking their daughters out in this arena even more. one of my favorite movies, "little miss sunshine", deals with many of these child pageant issues. girls under the age of 8 who look like they should be my peers. i love the moral behind that movie and how the family deals with it. ALSO- they had the scary creepy man who sat by himself to watch it. (enter child predator here) nuts! and, i'm not saying all pageants, or even all child pageants are evil and we should do away with them. kids like to have the spot light. they are little hams for attention. but, is it wise to stick your child in a skin tight mini skirt and tube top, with hair almost a foot high, make up you should be able to pop off like a mask, and fake teeth shaking her 6 year old behind to "hey ya" by outkast?! honestly!! i'm just completely revolted and confused.
seriously. case study. i see that being in my dissertation.
