So, I just read this article on Dogster, and my head nearly exploded. If you haven’t heard of TLC’s Toddlers and Tiaras than you’ve obviously been living under a rock. I don’t even own a television and I’ve still been subjected to clips of this monstrosity. It’s all about the crazy screwed up world of child pornography pageantry, where extremely young children are slathered in makeup, spoiled and shoved into beauty pageants, quite likely building little egotistical monsters at best, and inspiring potential eating disorders down the road at worst. Now, there are lots of ways to screw up your kids—I saw enough crazy horse-show moms to attest to that, and it’s the parents choice (notably not the child’s ’cause, well, they’re toddlers, they don’t know what’s good for them), and I suppose it’s better than not taking an interest in your kids at all. And if that’s where it ended that would be fine (well, not fine, but not legally child abuse so there isn’t much to be done about it aside from shake your head and try not to think about it too hard). However, apparently one of the prizes you can get at these pageants is A GODAMN PUPPY.
This is one of the dumbest ideas in the history of dumb-fucking ideas. I mean, you take a bunch of children, teach them to value looks over anything else, and then hand them a tiny life to be responsible for? Yeah, they’re too young for that, and clearly their parents have other priorities. I really don’t know which is worse: the parents who think it’s ok to accept a living, breathing animal as a reward for this stuff; the pageant organization who think it’s ethical to hand out a puppy as a prize; or the breeders who handed a puppy they brought into this world over to a life where they will likely be cuddled for a day, and then dumped at a shelter and probably euthanized the moment the next shiny thing comes along. ARRRRRGGG!!!!!!!!
I just—I don’t—AAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, there’s a petition to try to get Toddlers and Tiaras to at least stop giving airtime to the pageants that give out puppies as prizes. I’ve little faith in the effectiveness of online petitions, but aside from writing nasty emails to the organizers of said events, I don’t know what else to do about it.
Now, if you’ll excuse me I’m going to stare at this awesome puppy-cam until I stop hating the world.
Thanks for sharing this! I avoid anything to do with that horror of a show and so had not heard this recent development. It is so inapropriate to give a puppy to a child as a prize, let alone a toddler. I am sure it's all just for the cute factor and how the adorable puppy would play on the television screen. They didn't give a single thought to how these dogs would fare afterwards. Why would they? They don't even care about the children they are exploiting, why would they care about dogs that will undoubtedly end up in shelters – or worse. Ugh, ugh, ugh.