The Sordid And Tragic Legacy Of ‘Toddlers & Tiaras’

In a 2011 interview, Fox11 Los Angeles anchor Jeff Michael grilled Marcy Posey Gatterman, a pageant mom, as she sat next to her daughter, Kailia Posey. “Do you see poise, or do you see sex-ploitation?” Kailia, who couldn’t stop making faces at the camera, is shown dolled up and wearing all pink. Her brunette hair is heaped atop her head with at least half a can of hairspray and her face is full of makeup: blush, mascara, eye shadow, the works. She has the confidence of a seasoned performer, one who has been playing a part — as she had been for two years at the time. Of course Kailia couldn’t stop looking at the camera. She was only five. 

Marcy became defensive in response to Michael’s question. “I put her in age-appropriate things,” she said. Would she dress her daughter up as Julia Roberts’ prostitute character from “Pretty Woman,” as another mom had infamously done with her daughter? Of course not. (But Kailia did take the pageant stage dressed as a sexy nurse.) 

Kailia didn’t have much to say during the interview — she was too busy being a five-year-old and making faces at the camera. But her mother staunchly defended her decision to let Kailia participate in child beauty pageants and star in the TLC show “Toddlers & Tiaras.” 

Painting a toddler’s face with makeup, spray tanning her whole body and pushing her up on stage to be judged by a bunch of adults isn’t exactly a typical way to inspire confidence and poise in your child. Many girls on stage may exude self-assurance, but what happens when the stage lights turn off? In the interview, Michael warned: “When that attention finally goes away, she won’t know what to do. The depression follows that. There are a lot of disorders that follow that…”

More than a decade later, Kailia was still participating in pageants. In February of this year, she competed in Miss Teen Washington. Her bio read, in part, “Kailia hopes to show members of her generation that they can positively impact the world if they are patient and work hard.” Her Instagram is full of smiling photos, many so airbrushed that she looks more like the subject in a painting than a picture. Just last month, she attended her high school prom. 

Days later, she committed suicide. 

“Although she was an accomplished teenager with a bright future ahead of her, unfortunately in one impetuous moment, she made the rash decision to end her earthly life,” Kailia’s family told TMZ. “She won countless crowns & trophies after competing on the pageant circuit her entire life … Her highly acclaimed talent as a contortionist had already led to professional touring job offers, and she had recently been selected to be a cheerleader at her high school next fall.”

Kailia’s story is tragic, and we can’t know exactly what circumstances led to a 16-year-old making such a fatal decision. But it is worth wondering: Had she not been put through the child beauty pageant circuit, would her life have turned out differently? 

“Toddlers & Tiaras” first aired in 2009. It ran off and on for seven seasons, finally ending in 2016 but spawning three spin-offs and launching Alana Thompson, better known as “Honey Boo Boo,” into fame. After Kailia appeared on the show, she became a meme. As much as viewers and critics condemned the show for exploiting children, it aired so long for a reason: During its height, it attracted over 2 million viewers per episode. 

And what were these viewers seeing? A mother dressing up her four-year-old daughter as Dolly Parton, complete with fake boobs and butt; another four-year-old smoking a fake cigarette; scores of young girls sporting fake tans, hair and even teeth; and, of course, the “Pretty Woman” incident. Parents argued that they were inspiring confidence in their young girls. In the end, it just looks like hundreds of girls, starting at three and four years old, were constantly told they weren’t good enough. 

In one episode, a mother asks her daughter, “Are you pretty?” instead of saying, “You are pretty,” and this sends the little girl into a spiral. “Mommy, she’s thinking I’m not beautiful,” she cries. “And I am always beautiful.” This, she clearly doesn’t believe. 

If the children of beauty pageants struggle with self-esteem, battle depression and find it difficult not to see themselves as sexual objects, we shouldn’t be surprised. The girls of “Toddlers & Tiaras,” and the many beauty pageant contestants who never made it on the show, are constantly being judged, ostensibly for their talents, but always for their looks. They get their looks by dressing two decades older than they are. And no, these aren’t just Halloween costumes. 

“Child beauty pageants gain legitimacy within what might be called the myth of innocence in which children are often portrayed as inhabiting a world that is untainted, magical and utterly protected from the harshness of adult life,” writes cultural critic Henry A. Giroux in “Childhood and Celebrity.” “Innocence in this scenario … offers an excuse for adults to evade responsibility for how children are firmly connected to and shaped by the social, economic and cultural institutions run largely by adults.” 

In other words, you can’t argue that children in sexy nurse costumes aren’t affected by them because they don’t realize what they’re wearing. The adults, who should know better, know exactly what is going on. And the girls internalize a certain message: They’re only valuable as long as they’re pretty and sexy. 

According to the American Psychological Association, research links sexualization with depression, low self-esteem and anxiety. And the $5 billion child pageant industry is profiting from all of it. 

“Toddlers & Tiaras” may be off air, but that doesn’t mean the exploitation it revealed is any less prevalent. Thousands of child beauty pageants still take place each year. The problem, however, runs deeper than the pageant world.

Unfortunately, young girls don’t need to participate in beauty pageants to be exposed to hypersexualiztion. All they have to do is look at the magazines in the grocery store check-out lines, turn on the TV or open their phones. 

The racy film “Cuties,” supposedly meant to criticize the sexualization of young girls, is still streaming on Netflix. Any teenageer with an Instagram account will tell you that social media and its ubiquitous face-altering filters are certainly not helping their self-esteem. A Wall Street Journal investigative report last year revealed that Instagram knows exactly what it’s doing. “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse,” a team of internal researchers said.

That said, Kailia Posey’s heartbreaking story doesn’t have to be the story of her peers. When it seems like the whole world is telling girls that their bodies give them value, they need adults telling them they’re worth so much more than the parts that win points at beauty pageants. They need adults to let them be kids.

Madeline Fry Schultz is the assistant contributors editor at the Washington Examiner. Before that, she was the culture commentary writer at the Washington Examiner.

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases