What are you doing on Monday nights at the moment?
Hanging out? Maybe watching
Q&A? Thinking of spending some quality time with your family? Scheduling in a little post-
MasterChef recovery?
WIPE THAT MO'FING DIARY CLEAN AND MAKE SURE YOU SIT DOWN AND WATCH
TODDLERS & TIARAS, ON THREAT OF DEATH.
Truly.
Sometimes a show comes along that just defies belief; previously you might have put
10 Years Younger In 10 Days in this category, or maybe
Sylvania Waters.
Toddlers & Tiaras is your new must-watch show.
Here's the Season 1 promo:
Anyone vaguely familiar with the term "pageant retouching" or who has seen
Painted Babies or is even remotely up to speed with the ins and outs of small-town America will be familiar with the idea of kiddie beauty pageants.
But only through the intense glare of
Toddlers & Tiaras does the true, demented majesty and lunacy of the child pageant circuit shine in all its grotesque glory.
This screencap (from America's TLC network, home of such masterpieces as
Jon & Kate Plus Eight) should give you a bit of an idea what you're in for:
Yes, that is a three-year-old girl dressed up like Nomi Malone.
Each episode follows a handful of families as their children compete in regional and national pageants (a different pageant each episode).
Episode 3, which screens on Lifestyle YOU this Monday at 8.30pm (and repeats on Saturday; we've just begun Season 2 here), follows those who are entering the improbably named Show Me Smiles Fantasy Pageant in Bernie, Missouri.
It's all about the "glitz": "fake teeth, fake eyelashes, fake tans", and outrageously expensive Swarovski-adorned competition outfits.
As Brittney, the pageant director, admits, "Whoever has the most money wins."
Among the three girls highlighted this episode is Haley, 8, whose dad, the bearish Chuck, is her "gopher, bank, and biggest fan".
Chuck has to appear onstage with Haley in the 'Daddy & Me' category, and he duly learns a complicated (for dads, at least) dance routine. "Anything for my little girl," he says, sincerely, "It's her sport; it's her football."
Problem is? As Haley puts it, matter-of-factly, "When my Dad's up on stage... he doesn't really sparkly."
IT WILL BLOW YOUR MIND.
The thing about child beauty pageants is that they are wrong on so many deep and spectacular levels that discussing that fact feels redundant.
Where the hell do you begin?? The deranged pageant operators? The ex-beauty-queen "moms" living vicariously through their prepubescent daughters? The dads who are even more into it than their wives? The children being spray-tanned in their kitchens?!
For example, four-year-old Olivia's mother Kelley says "whether Olivia wins or loses, she's always my little princess"; she seems like a caring, supportive mother - until you remember that she's wrapping her daughter up in "glitz" and drop-punting her onto a pageant stage to face the (very real and very upsetting; as Olivia says, "If I lose I'll be sad") possibility of not winning.
Toddlers & Tiaras, as a cultural document - the show adds no additional commentary or editorialisation, merely presenting these "journeys" at face value - and as a terrifying time capsule, is absolutely essential viewing.
You'll never look at a Swarovski crystal the same way.