So the folks at TLC, by way of Gaiam, sent me a copy of Toddlers and Tiaras on DVD, and chances are, my name is now on a list somewhere.

See, Toddlers and Tiaras is pretty much what it says on the box–it’s all about those bizarre child beauty pageants that are so popular, especially down south.  There are various sponsors, various competition styles and various rewards, but one thing is the same no matter what’s going on–the pageants we see here are some of the most genuinely frightening moments of television today.

If you’ve ever seen a talk show about “stage moms”, those horrible women who shriek and throw tantrums at their children for staging improper performances, and were horrified, then brace yourselves because season one of Toddlers and Tiaras will throw legions of nitpicking women frantically barking orders at small children at you.  Occasionally, there will be MEN doing this, and I think it might actually be more horrifying to see the menfolk get all nitpicky with their children than to see the women do it.

There is also, of course, a whole legion of people who find this whole practice little more than legitimized child abuse, or worse yet, the outright sexualization of children, and undoubtedly there are some people out there (if they can be called that) who are enjoying this a little too much.  Watching two year olds be paraded around on stage in swimwear is disturbing to say the least.  And worst of all, some parents will actually make tepid protestations against making their children look “sexy”, but this clearly isn’t sufficient to stop them from actually putting them in this situation to begin with.

And then, in what is perhaps the saddest moment of an already sad show, is the parents’ reactions to their child’s performances.  I watched a grown man cry when his daughter had had the horrible misfortune of winning first runner up, because this “took her out of everything”.  This man was literally convinced that his daughter had lost the entire day because she had merely come in first runner up.  And admittedly, according to the arcane awards system, a first runner up win does remove you from consideration of larger awards, but the man was literally convinced she’d lost the day.

And then there was the other mother who actually spent more on her child’s pageant competition than they could have possibly WON from the pageant itself.

It’s vaguely horrifying, and at the same time, educational.  And at the end, it’s a horror the like of which we’ve never seen before.  It’s like, in the words of Stephen King, watching a cat give birth to a litter of two-headed kittens.  And thus, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands Toddlers and Tiaras a five out of ten–for those who love this sort of thing, the very zenith of their work.  And for those who don’t, a complete loss.