A toddler dressed up in a grown-up costume can be really funny – but what if it is a prostitute’s costume? Here opinions vary to a great extent, as can be seen from a recent Toddlers and Tiaras show.
Wendy Dickey made her 3-year-old daughter Paisley wear one for Wednesday’s show; the costume was inspired by a streetwalker character from Pretty Woman played by Julia Roberts. Dickey explained to TMZ that the outfit was by no means meant as provocatively sexy – but this is what the Parents Television Council refused to accept.
Sexualizing a little girl of that age ought to be regarded as insupportable even if it is part of a child beauty pageant, declared Melissa Henson, PTC’s director of communications and public education who referred to the incident as a clear-cut instant of child exploitation. Calling the display “brazen and wanton material,” Henson went straight for TLC’s throat denouncing the company for aggravating its position with millions of parents who hate to see children divested of their innocence for the sake of higher ratings and a dollop of money.
The opinion was seconded within the pageant – a competing girl’s mother spoke harshly of Paisley’s tight-fitting, bare-thighed and bare-midriffed costume. She said that pageant moms are already pushing things a bit far what with heavy makeups for the tots, fake teeth, wigs and tan sprays. The TLC and the parents are already under a lot of fire for dressing up tots in unreasonable outfits, so limits ought to be set. Personally, she added, “I would never, ever do that to my little girl.”
Nevertheless, Paisley’s image impressed the pageant’s judges the right way, and they gave her the highest title in her age group, the Grand Supreme.
Source of the image: Dailymail.
