The Angry Rant

Remember the outrage? Remember the resolve in the collective consciousness of America?

It’s been 13 years since the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the pint-sized pageant queen who was found in the basement of her parent’s home in Colorado. In the aftermath of her death, it was revealed that JonBenet was heavily involved in beauty pageants, the behest of her mother, who was a former pageant queen herself.

While the elements surrounding her death were grotesque and disturbing, the focus of the nation slowly shifted from the murder investigation to the fall out that occurred as more and more was discovered about the youth pageant circuit that she (and by extension, her parents) engaged in. Although she was only six at the time of her passing, she was a veteran by pageant standards, having rarely been seen without a tiara or a gown.

As the nation became more engrossed in JonBenet’s story, an outrage cropped up from middle America, a moral conundrum that was “should children be subjected to this lifestyle?” As more and more was revealed, the nation gradually became sickened by the idea that children were being subjected to these pageants.

But yet, JonBenet, and so many little girls like her are subjected to the meat market world of little princesses, moving in and out of the dance in perfect time, their parents acting as the metronome.

But in the years since her death, that resolve has slowly faded, and it is now nothing more than a dot on the horizon – a grain of sand in the distance that we are only barely able to conjure up the image of what it once was. Pageants still go on, and the mothers and fathers, who see dollar bills in place of their children’s eyes, ignore the tine voice of reason in lieu of some unfulfilled fantasy that they can live vicariously through their child.

You need to look no farther than the show “Toddlers and Tiaras,” to see how far we’ve come. It follows showbiz moms and dads as they take little Suzy on the pageant circuit. But instead of Little Miss Sunshine, we are exposed to the sorts of parents that make Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver.

Within 30 seconds of the first episode, you are hit with alarmingly disturbing information: over 300,000 children participate in this 5 billion dollar a year industry. As that information is flashed on the screen, we are treated to audio from parents talking about how much money they can win, while they smile about how much fake eyelashes, tans and makeup they apply to their children, while one parent remarks: “It’s just like turning them into live baby dolls,” with so much blissful unawareness that you wouldn’t be surprised if he still believed in Santa Claus.

While TLC attempts to legitimize the parents, they only succeed in making them out to be monsters that are born out of greed and fame. These types of beauty pageants are more akin to cockfighting than a talent contest. The children are there, not because they want to be, but because mommy and daddy say so. They are paraded around like so many pieces of meat and thrown aside with their fragile psyches when their time has passed them by.

Look, this is shameful. After JonBenet was murdered, this type of “competition” came under so much heat that it almost buckled under the pressure that was being applied by common sense wielding, concerned individuals who have more sense than to turn their 4-year-old into a makeup-clad, fake-tanned cash-cow.

The fake lashes, the veneers and the primping is bordering on abuse. Not physical abuse, but mental abuse. These children learn at an early age that physical appeal and attractiveness are all that matter. They eschew things like intelligence and character, because they don’t pay the bills like a smile or a nice tan.

And one day, these children, these babies, are going to grow up. And when the tans fade and the veneers crack, all they have left is their frail self-esteem because no one cares about them anymore. And all they can do is look back on their childhood and wonder “Why?” But no one is going to listen, and no one is going to care. All because of some parents who were more concerned with their own validation than the welfare of their own child.

And to those parents, I say this: You should be ashamed of yourselves. You are monsters who aren’t better than any child abuser. You better take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself: Is this what’s right for my child?

But you already know the answer.

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Tags:   JonBenet Ramsey · Stupid Parents · Toddlers and Tiaras4 Comments