Title card for TLC's "Toddlers & Tiaras"
A mini-hooker? Are they SERIOUS? Tonight’s episode of TLC’s “Toddlers and Tiaras” will be showing footage of a pageant where one mother has dressed her three-year-old toddler in a prostitute costume reminiscent of Julia Roberts’ character in 1990’s “Pretty Woman”. Last week, another mom on the same show dressed her four-year-old in a Dolly Parton costume, complete with fake breasts and buns. (The story links can be found at the bottom of this post.)
Although I have some serious issues with the Parents Television Council and their “bible-thumping” foundations, I must say that on this one, we’re of the same mind and purpose. TLC, and for that matter Discovery Communications, INC should be ashamed of themselves for airing this kind of overt sexualization of small children! Along with TLC, the mothers themselves should be called on the carpet as well. What mother in their right mind dresses their young daughter in risque costumes or clothes, and then parades her in front of others? (My question would be “they actually allowed people this stupid to BREED?”)
I have a daughter of my own. She is now seven and a half, and in my eyes at least, she is beautiful both inside and out. She has a heart the size of the Montana sky, she’s nowhere near selfish or self-assuming, and has deep, piercing grey eyes. When she gets older, I’m definitely going to have to keep a shotgun behind the door, if you get my meaning…
I have long been opposed to the objectification of females in general. Beauty pageants, all those trendy magazines like Cosmo and Vogue, and even these little toddler pageants all have the same detrimental effect on women: they focus the woman’s attention on themselves primarily, emphasizing external beauty often to the exclusion of everything else. While beauty is a favorable attribute in a woman, it’s not the only thing that matters.
Mary Woolstonecraft, the 18th-century writer and feminist wrote the following:
“Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”
What she’s basically saying there is the same thing that I stated previously. In closing, I truly believe that these mothers and TLC deserve every derisive commentary that they’re now receiving. Shame on them.
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Toddlers and Tiaras Mom Dresses Daughter as Prostitute (Fox News)
Toddlers and Tiaras Star Dons Fake Boobs and Butt (ABC News)
The Cybersattva 
Then don’t put your children in bathing suits. There’s a ridiculous double standard here because of the connotations of different clothing items. Dressing a toddler in a bikini shows much more skin than dressing a toddler like a prostitute, and I recently read an article about a 35 year old man who ********* a toddler after watching her play in a sprinkler in a yellow bikini for a while.
Just a thought: why on Earth would any mom want to dress up her kid to look like a pedo’s wet dream? Yes, truelibertarian, I totally get what you’re saying. Normal people wouldn’t think of those little girls as sex objects; however, a pedo would. That’s where the problem is.
A pedo already does think of them as sex objects…. As for why a mom would want to dress their child like that? Uh, they think it’s adorable, or they’re attention whores, or some other reason. I don’t know; I’m not a parent on Toddlers and Tiaras.
Also, dressing a child up to look like an adult is the opposite of a pedorast’s wet dream. The whole point is that they look young.
They don’t look like adults; they look like children dressed in skimpy clothing. Besides, a pedo is going to look at them MORE SO than they already would.
@ truelibertarian – Nobody looks at a baby and/or toddler running around in just a diaper and complains because that image, to 99.9% of the population is a completely unsexual sight. It’s natural.
What isn’t natural is for parents to play up the female characteristics that indicate sexual availability through the use of makeup. You can read a short article on the use of makeup to attact mates here.
Your entire argument is fallacious, due to the inclusion of context in response to my example, and the exclusion of context in the other example. You can’t have it both ways. If you think context doesn’t play a role in the nature of sexuality, then make that claim. But you’re holding two contradictory positions.
However, I’d say context has an obvious role in sexuality. If a woman is naked in her apartment prior to showering, that has no bearing on her “sexual availability.” If a baby/toddler is running around naked or just in a diaper, that has no bearing on its sexual availability. Same with the toddlers dressed like hookers. General context still applies: it’s still a toddler playing dress up.
Oh, and I read that article. It’s completely irrelevant, because it makes no use of context, not to mention the fact that makeup doesn’t determine sexual availability at all (it’s 2011, not everything women do is for men).
I lost the remote control one time when I was sick and was forced to watch an episode of this crap. I find it sick. It was the Jon Benet Ramsey case that first brought this subculture to my attention and I tried to give it the benefit of the doubt but it is totally about the objectifacation of little girls. If it wasn’t, there would be no need for the hair and makeup. They could just be natural and wear age-appropriate outfits.
Makeup was specifically designed to make grown women more appealing to the opposite sex. So its use, by very definition, is sexualizing toddlers and children.
I find the whole subculture disgusting and I find the attitudes and character traits that these mothers and organizations are cultivating in these young children to be borderline, mental abuse and neglect.
Swandiver shoots…swandiver scores! Nothing but net!
I don’t think it’s sexualization, I think some people think it’s cute. And some of the tiny girls are adorable. They’re too young for it to be sexual (except for those who’re into that).
Dressing a three-year-old up as a hooker isn’t sexualization? I quite emphatically and vociferously disagree! What is that saying to the three-year-old? That hookers are cute? That this type of lifestyle is perfectly fine and dandy? No. This is where our opinions diverge on a herculean scale. You say that they’re too young for it to be sexual, however their youth has nothing to do with the apparent connotations of the outfits they’re being dressed in. What’s at issue here is the combination of the connotation and the youth. It’s wrong, any way you slice it.
I would hope that your take on this would change, were you to become a father to a baby girl.
The connotation of the outfit isn’t the only factor in the equation. Age and context must be taken into account. It’s saying, “Awww look at this adorable little girl.” When a 3 year old girl is running around in a diaper and nothing else, nobody says, “She’s naked, this is horribly disgusting and inappropriate!” Instead, it’s “Awww look at this adorable little girl.” You can rationalize it how you like, but dressing a 3 year old in a costume isn’t sexualization. If it was a higher age, I’d agree it’s sexualization.
Quote from the article: “When she wears the fake boobs and the fake butt it’s just like an added extra bonus and it’s really funny when she comes out on stage and everybody thinks it’s hysterical.”
Oh, and I defy you to come up with one logical explanation how prostitution is immoral.
My own personal aspirations for any prospective daughter are frankly irrelevant and lack objectivity. An emotional response from an archaic code of sexual ethics is hardly the way this issue should be decided.
Suffice it to say that we will never see eye to eye on this one, because we live two diametrically opposed lives. End of story.