The James Logan Courier

By Zohal Sharif, Courier Staff Writer

Toddlers and Tiaras is a popular show on TLC about little girls and boys who enter in pageants and are judged on their beauty, personality, and costumes. Aside the sparkly outfits, spray-on tans, and poofy hair, are these children victims of child abuse?

Here is a video of a mother bribing her child with a bag of candy when getting her eyebrows waxed. Not only was the little girl crying and begging not to have the cloth strip ripped of, but then her mother commented that normally she would have held her down while the waxer ripped it off.

They tried to bribe her with a bag of candy, and while seeing it for a moment it makes her perk up. Then she quickly realizes what exactly is going to happen and she changes her tune really quick.

The mother also said, “I would like to say that beauty doesn’t play a part in winning pageants, but they’re called beauty pageants for a reason.” Unfortunately, people do go to painful situations to reach beauty, but mind theses contestants are mere children.

“The whole entire programming of Toddlers and Tiaras should be cancelled,” said Mateen Fana, a sophomore, “Kids are running and screaming throughout the entire episode! Parents and producers and even child protective services should be ashamed for not finding the actions in this show a form of child abuse.”

Then there's a mother who dresses her child as Madonna. Not the 2010 sweat pants wearing Madonna, the 90's cone boob flaunting, pushing the limit Madonna. The famous cone boob outfit Madonna used to turn heads, was put on a 3 year old. And we wonder why little girls in our country are growing up with these image issues.

Most of the children on this show are forced into outfits that "show off" their body. Not only the outfits and extreme measures to achieve beauty are wrong, but these pageants affected the attitudes of the girls on the show.

"If I don't get the trophy, I'm gonna cry and beat those girls," said Kailia, a contestant.

Child cruelty, or not, this show sends a horrible message to it's viewers and should be cancelled.