It is. For children. There's just nothing as uplifting as watching mothers insist on having their seven-year-olds (or much younger) get spray tans, brow waxes, hair extensions, and false teeth. Thank you, pageant parents, for teaching your daughters that physical beauty is the best they have to offer the world, and that they fail at that without extensive intervention.
It's never too early to indoctrinate your daughters in the philosophy that if they ain't pretty they ain't nothing, is it.
A while back I heard about a makeover show that targets tomboyish/androgynous girls. Take them, turn them into the Ideal Of The Day, and their mothers are sooooo happy that their daughters finally look like girls! No idea if this is real/still running/whatever, but urgh.
Struck home for me, because my mother hates that I'm not following the gender binary very closely. I hope she's not the sort who'd sign me up for that kind of thing. So far it's just been lectures and a lot of buying me clothes I won't wear.
Oy. Being a woman is one giant catch-22, it really is. Which is why it kills me to see the mothers on this show swallowing that value-based-on-appearance crap wholeheartedly and regurgitating it to their very young and impressionable daughters. Those girls are going to be dealing with these impossible standards and expectations for the rest of their lives. They should have some safe haven from all the nonsense. It's hard enough to deal with as an adult a lot of the time; it's heartbreaking to see little bitsy girls trying to handle that pressure.
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Sounds beauty pageant-ish.
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A while back I heard about a makeover show that targets tomboyish/androgynous girls. Take them, turn them into the Ideal Of The Day, and their mothers are sooooo happy that their daughters finally look like girls! No idea if this is real/still running/whatever, but urgh.
Struck home for me, because my mother hates that I'm not following the gender binary very closely. I hope she's not the sort who'd sign me up for that kind of thing. So far it's just been lectures and a lot of buying me clothes I won't wear.
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