Toddlers and Tiaras: What Did You Think?

I think it's disgusting. These women need to get their own lives! These kids grow up fast enough I can't understand why they want to push it so much. I want my little girl to look like on and act like one. Then you hear these women say..."well she wants to do it"...personally I think that's a bunch of bull!!

I think mothers should wait till thier daughter wants to enter something not push her into it ................I was forsed to sing in front of people and had to wear awful costumes  .In my head and to this day it bothers me ..........I know I was loved. By my mom  but she did not get to do things like that so I felt she was living her life in me .  

I can't understand why mother's would want to force their little girls to look grown up when they are not...and it really bothers me that they can't see what they are doing to their daughters, I'm sorry but it just disgusts me..Did we learn nothing from Jon Bennet Ramsey? There are Pediphiles out there that get their kicks off this kind of  exploitation.....I have a 5 yr. old daughter and I think she is beautiful but she is 5 yrs. old for God's sake let them be their age...girls grow up to fast these days, let them be little girls.....JMHO

I love my girls for who the are...and not for how they compare to others!

I sell tutus and princess accessories on one of my websites...but they are intended for dress-up FUN.  All little girls like to get dressed up and feel pretty.  How they feel about themselves is all that's important..not how others think they look.

 I think the beauty pageants puts pressure on those poor little girls...even winning must just cause more anxiety for the next event.

I was bored...my son did pageants for his first year or so. Boys are judged much differently than girls--obviously, they don't have fake hair, tons of make-up, and many don't spray tan (we never encountered any little guys getting spray tanned, but I'm sure it happens somewhere, sometime). With them, it really is based more on personality than looks...while many of the systems SAY they aren't judging these little girls on their looks, one look at the scoresheets tells you otherwise. The escapades and attitudes of these parents was no big suprise to me, and to be honest, I've seen much much worse in the real life pageant world.

I will add...for those concerned about the pedophile scenario of pageants:   ALL of the systems and their directors are aware of this risk, as are the parents. While they don't show it on tv, a very large majority of these pageants actually have decent security measures in place. Anybody other than the parent taking the child on stage (if their age requires so) has to buy a ticket into the event...some pageants only charge a few dollars, but most charge around $10 to $20 to get in per day (and a lot of these are multi-day events). ON TOP of the charge, most pageants make the people coming in prove that they are in, indeed, related to or invited to the pageant by a contestant. Most of these pageants also do not allow cameras to be brought in, even by the parents. They have one photographer (or the photographer and an assistant or 2)...they do ALL of the pictures, and parents are charged for pictures if they want them. Many of these pageant kids & their families are one LARGE extended family, in the sense that once your child begins competing in a certain age group, they will always be in that group...they all just grow up together on stage.

(cont.) The kids have playdates outside of pageants, they have the same pageant coaches, the moms become friends (well, friends that talk crap about each other behind their backs  lol). We could go to pageants six hours from home and still have the same group of kids competing together and playing together in the hotel lobby after their age group was done. I have albums of candid pics taken from all of our pageants in a tri-state area and you see the same groups of children in ALL of them. The point I'm getting at is these people KNOW an outsider, and they do NOT make them welcome...they eye them, watch them, follow them, etc. Now, I know that there are still people out there that are managing to get in...I know that the likelihood of some child's parent/grandparent/relative/friend of the family being a pedophile is a possibility....but this is a deterrent to at least some of those not-wanted people. Generally your pageants that just let anybody in are the small-town, county fair pageants, NOT the pageant systems that go regional and country wide.

My thoughts on it are, it's just moms trying to live our their dreams thru their kids.  I find it sick, to be honest.  False teeth, spray on tans, more make-up than a drag-queen would wear, very provocative clothing, false eye lashes, teaching these little girls that it's all about the way you look.........I don't know how any mother could put her child/children thru this kind of torture~

I didn't see the show but I don't need to to give you my opinion. These kids need to stay kids! Why are we pushing them to grow up so fast? Then we wonder about teenage pregnancy rates, etc.