It was just last week that everyone was up in arms over a mother shown on Toddlers & Tiaras who put a padded butt and boobs on a four year-old to dress her up as Dolly Parton for a child pageant. This week, we’re treated to a little girl named Paisley (I can’t find her age, but she has to be around four or five Update: she’s three!) dressed up as Julia Roberts’ prostitute character from Pretty Woman and strutting on stage in front of a backdrop painted to look like the Beverly Wiltshire hotel. Another pageant mother, with a little girl dressed more appropriately in curls and a cute dress (but still wearing makeup, natch) narrates that it’s stunts like that which give pageant moms a bad name. Try to watch the clip above without your having your mouth involuntarily hang open.
In tonight’s episode of TLC’s “Toddlers & Tiaras,” little Paisley trots out on stage in a pair of thigh-high vinyl boots, spandex miniskirt and wig, identical to what Julia Roberts’ character, a low-rent Hollywood hooker, wore in 1990’s “Pretty Woman.”
The backdrop to the tiny streetwalker’s sashay was a cardboard facade of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel–where Richard Gere’s wealthy character kept his concubine for the flat rate of $3000 per week.
“I would never, ever do that to my little girl, ever,” says the mother of one of the other contestants. “Us pageants moms already take a huge rap for what we’re doing to our little girls, and it’s outfits like that that give us a bad rap.”
She’s not kidding. The Parents Television Council not only condemned Paisley’s mother, but the network airing “Toddlers & Tiaras.”
“We have a serious problem when a network formerly known as The Learning Channel features a toddler, who probably hasn’t even learned to read, dressed as a prostitute showing off her sexy strut,” The PTC said in a statement issued to TMZ.com. “There’s no question, TV executives are complicit in robbing these small kids of their childhood. For years we’ve seen adult sexuality being inappropriately and aggressively foisted on innocent young children, but children today are being sexualized at younger and younger ages. All available data suggests they will suffer for it later in life.”
[From FoxNews.com]
In what universe is this ok? I get that Pretty Woman an iconic movie from the 90s that this kid’s idiotic mom probably watched over and over when she was in grade school parked in front of the TV while her own mom was off getting drunk and sleeping around. It’s about a hooker, though, and she not only dressed her kid up as a hooker character, she had her walk around in front of a whole backdrop she painted, as if the child was working a streetcorner! It’s outrageous. This makes putting some fake T&A on a kid look like like a decent alternative.
Update: Several of you have commented that this little girl won the Ultimate Grande Supreme title. Also TMZ has an interview with the mom who did this to her daughter, and she claims this outfit isn’t that revealing and then she gets all defensive and says it’s better than forcing the kid into sports. Really.
