Comments on Stacy's comments on Toddlers & Tiaras

[MamaJunebug]

Late in March, Stacy McDonald posted a “Your Sacred Calling†blog-screed against “Toddlers and Tiaras†based on the infamous episode showing the morbidly obese mother who dosed her daughter on “go-go juice†to get her sugar-high for pageant performances. The daughter’s drawling speech, even without the sugar concoction, is so incomprehensible that the producers subtitle all her comments, but it’s clear that she refers to herself as “Honey boo-boo chile.â€

Michael K at dlisted.com has also come down hard on T&T, and it’s his criticism, not Stacy’s, that caused me to look at the show with a jaundiced eye. But anyway, here’s what Stacy says, along with my meager attempts to give a Burris-like, thoughtful response to Stacy’s indignant prose:

(title) Are beauty pageants beautiful?

(Video of “coupon queen†mama interacting with her pageant daughter at home, as well as pageant shots back- and on-stage)

This poor little girl is being exploited and corrupted by her own mother. And you know her mother has to be miserable too. If you think beauty pageants are “beautiful,†watch this to see if you might consider evaluating them differently from now on…if you can stomach it.

Of course, while this was an extreme example, and it made the “ugliness†of pageants obvious, all “beauty contests†are just as disgusting. Parading little girls around (and even grown women in adult pageants), often for the base pleasure of critical onlookers, is shameful. Teaching young women that their worth is found in how many people think they’re cute, how they are shaped, how well (or willing) they are to shake their stuff for a bunch of voyeurists is disgraceful.

Visions of slave auctions dance in my head…

(photo of slave-auction artwork)

Think about it, what’s the real difference between stripping off your dignity, so that you can stand on a runway or stage half dressed while strangers evaluate your body (strangers who are given the right to decide whether or not you’re “good enoughâ€) and standing on an auction block while slave traders do the same thing? Both situations are humiliating, degrading, and shameful, but somehow women are fooled into thinking pageants honor them and their daughters. Whose slave are you?

For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s… You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. 1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23

My thoughts upon watching the video, doing a little TWoP research on T&T, and reading Stacy’s post center on 3 things:

Stacy’s laziness. She chooses to criticize an already unpopular demographic: the morbidly obese, lower-middle-class, hoarder-lite, mush-mouthed Southern mother who thinks her daughter will benefit from pageant competition, or will benefit the family from pageant competition, or who is getting some kind of vicarious feelings of achievement through that daughter’s participation.

My reaction? Way to pile on, Stacy. Can’t you think of another subculture to decry, to use as an example of vacuous, hell-bent godlessness?

Stacy’s myopia. Let’s think about Coupon Queen’s background. Any chance that she got post-high-school training? Any chance she finished high school? What other options exist, in a post-industrial society, in rural Georgia, USA, for an undereducated woman to make a mark or a living? There are service jobs, employment as a domestic; if she’s really lucky there could be some light industrial factory or governmental job (school district secretary or classroom aide).

I didn’t research the Coupon Queen’s situation, but the prospects for Mr. Coupon Queen (presuming there is one) are about as un-sunny. Which leads to my charge of myopia: Stacy has a penchant for, and evangelizes homeschooling with an eye toward rejecting higher education. Her educational ideal parallels the education that Mr. & Mrs. Coupon Queen probably got. They almost certainly don’t have even associate’s degrees.

Stacy, don't you see that the lifestyle and attitudes you endorse are very similar to the ones that got the CQs to where they are?

Stacy’s callousness. Coupon Queen didn’t become morbidly obese because she was happy with herself, confident or involved in a variety of sports and fitness-promoting pastimes. CQ is IMHO on the hoarder spectrum. Hoarding is another dysfunction that usually isn’t found in mentally healthy and emotionally confident individuals – but at least she hoards (overbuys) useful items like paper toweling and toilet paper. Her home appears to be clean and arranged to be easily kept clean – while it’s not decorated expertly, there are no frilly curtains or mounds of knick-knacks: This indicates to me that she has that much sense of self-respect and care for her family.

Stacy, where is the Christian charity toward a bedevilled soul who needs prayers as well as guidance toward goals?

Of course this is all prompted by personal experience. I used to work with a physically beautiful couple who had two daughters. The first was incredibly beautiful from birth, and her parents enrolled her in baby beauty pageants as soon as she was age-eligible. The second was, bluntly, not a pretty child, had incredible sports ability and last I heard, both girls were doing well in their respective competitions.

How does this apply? The parents were the first in both their families to get any education beyond high school. Both of them attended community college and she had worked her way up to an executive’s secretary while he was working in a para-professional role using his training. Thanks in part to their parents’ business acumen they had the money to build an impressive mini-manse on acreage and they were churchgoers, though not Protestant.

Would Stacy lambaste that couple over their daughters’ lives? Probably: the parents were not Protestant and the girls weren’t homeschooled. Also, as pageant and sports children they did not wear mid-calf skirts or longer, fulltime.

Stacy doesn’t seem to see that Coupon Queen and her ilk are as much to be pitied as scorned, nor that Stacy’s ideals for educating young people, especially for under-educating young women, are as apt to give middle-class families cockamamie ideas like pagents as they are to have the same effect on lower-middle-class folks with substandard education.

Stacy or one of her acolytes make the point that pedophiles lurk around child beauty pageants, and that could be true. However, I’ve also read that most pedos are more attracted to children who look typical than they are to tarted-up or costumed children, thus the lurking around public parks and school playgrounds. That being the case, what’s the point of Stacy and her acolytes publishing photo after photo after photo of their modest maidens and boy virgins every chance they get, on their unrestricted blogs?

FTR, the foregoing is not intended to bash folks without higher education or training, nor folks with eating disorders, nor Southerners, nor rural people, nor hoarders, nor folks with get-rich-quick schemes dancing in their heads, nor even pageant moms. It is intended to be a critique of Stacy McDonald’s latest cautionary tale/sermonette about someone she finds to be beneath her own rules and standards.

[Marian the Librarian]

Great post, MJB - brava!

Please oh please, copy and paste it into the comments section on Stacy's blog? I'm enjoying imagining the "TILT" signs flashing in her eyes as she's confronted by your logic. :twisted:

FWIW, I think there isn't a human being alive on this planet who isn't beneath Stacy's own rules and standards. Except, of course, Stacy herself.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Criticizing honey boo-boo-chile's mama is a bit like shooting fish in a barrell. Easy, but not very sporting.

What about the TLC execs who clearly see this family as ratings gold, and exploited it to the hilt?

Now, I'm not going to call it great (or even competent) parenting to give a 6 yr old child Red Bull, or to spend $15,000 on pageants but get a blank and confused look on your face when someone asks about a college fund.

[shesinsane]

Think about it, what’s the real difference between stripping off your dignity, so that you can stand on a runway or stage half dressed while strangers evaluate your body (strangers who are given the right to decide whether or not you’re “good enoughâ€) and standing on an auction block while slave traders do the same thing? Both situations are humiliating, degrading, and shameful, but somehow women are fooled into thinking pageants honor them and their daughters. Whose slave are you?

Let's see, off the top of my head:

You have to sign up for pagents, if you don't you won't partcipate. Slaves had no such choices.

Pagents are an event and when they are over that's it. The purchase of a slave at auction would determine where that slave would live, work, and how they would be treated, depending on who purchased them. It would be different if winning Nacho Supreme meant you got to get an education while all the other pagent girls had to work in the fields.

And then there's the law. If a slave tried to run away rather than be auctioned off, the police and bounty hunters hired by the master would pursue them. As far as I know, no state in the US has laws requiring pagent contestants must particpate in all events or face a whipping or more severe punishment.

I like a good analogy, but Stacy hasn't made one. I think she minimizes the suffering caused by slavery when she equates it to beauty pagents. Maybe you could see a simliarity between oiling up slaves so they'd look shiny for auction and spray tanning your daughter so she has that glitzy glow, but that's about it.