Have you ever heard of the show Toddlers and Tiaras on TLC? I’m sure you have considering each episode draws in over 2 million viewers.

I don’t understand what America’s infatuation is with these little girls in pageants. Why are we forcing these little girls to grow up too fast just so their moms can live vicariously through them?

Toddlers and Tiaras isn’t the only show like this on television. There’s also a show called Dance Moms on Lifetime. I’ve actually watched Dance Moms (thanks to my roommate’s obsession with the show) and it’s seriously horrifying. The dance instructor is extremely mean to the kids and the moms fight with each other like teenage girls.

The worst part about the show is how the young girls dance. There are girls as young as seven years old on the show and they dance like grown women in clubs would. I don’t understand why mothers would want their children to dance so provocatively.

These shows feature girls dressed in outfits I don’t even think grown women should wear. One girl on Toddlers and Tiaras was dressed up to look like Dolly Parton. Her mom even put fake breasts and a fake butt on her to make her appear more like Parton. There are so many things wrong with this. There is nothing cute or funny about sexualizing young girls. Another mom dressed her daughter up as the hooker from the movie Pretty Woman.

What is wrong with our society? Why do we think it is okay to make these little girls look like sexual objects?

The money spent on these pageants and dance competitions astounds me. One mother on Toddlers and Tiaras spent over $2,000 on a wig, hair, makeup, and a dress.

The little girls even get spray tans, so they won’t lose points for being pale. These moms spend tens of thousands of dollars to prepare these girls to win pageants.

We’re teaching these girls you have to pile on makeup, be tan, and wear expensive clothes to be beautiful.

What kind of life are you building your child up to when you base everything on beauty? These girls are going to grow up thinking they can do anything just because they are pretty.

You never hear the moms talking about the importance of schoolwork or intelligence.

I doubt the majority of these girls will end up as supermodels, so what do their futures hold if the only thing they have going for them is their looks?

The most upsetting part about girls in pageants and dance competitions is some of them don’t even want to do it. I’ve seen girls throw themselves on the ground and cry because they don’t want to compete.

Their moms want to mold them into little stars, but some of them have no desire to be in the limelight. Why would you force your child to do anything they didn’t like to do?

It saddens me that these shows are popular because it legitimizes what these moms are doing to the daughters. In my opinion, the moms are turning these young girls into people that only value beauty.

They are teaching them that it is acceptable to dress provocatively and spend crazy amounts of money on pageants that mean nothing.

We need to teach young girls to be intelligent and independent.

If you watch these shows I want you to legitimately ask yourself why you watch them. I can only hope that the people who watch these shows don’t raise their daughters the way the mothers on the shows do.