Last year, it was reported that Sasha Bennington is so obsessed with UK "model"/celebrity Jordan (real name: Katie Price) that she bleaches her hair, sports extensions, plucks her eyebrows, has acrylic nails, gets spray tans and wears Jordan-esque makeup. Also? Sasha is 11 years old.
This July, BBC will air a new documentary featuring the pint-sized Jordan fan and her mother as they prepare for and compete in an American beauty pageant in Texas.
"People can say what they want. I know there is nothing bad about what I'm doing. I'm just helping my daughter make something of her life. Any good mum would do the same," says Sasha's mother.
Ask Sasha how she sees herself and she replies: 'Blonde, pretty, dumb - I don't need brains.' Her mum laughs her head off at this, proud that the child is so like her.
EDIT: Another doc Sasha's been in (starting at 1:10 mark)-- thanks
ugo_glenncoco
Click to view
She wore her first set of false eyelashes at eight, and her beauty treatments cost £300 a month. A sick abuse of an 11-year-old? 'No', insists Sasha's mother, 'I just want her to be famous...'
At 11, Sasha Bennington is too young to remember the days when Jordan was just a country and being branded 'fake' was something to be ashamed of.
But maybe the youngster's biggest tragedy is that her mother, Jayne, 31, is in no hurry to paint a picture of how it used to be.
What sort of mother wants her daughter to look like a doll? The image I have in my head is of Exorcist Barbie, but Jayne sees something else entirely.
Her response to the pageant pictures of Sasha - looking shocking with deep red lips and heavily smoked eyes - probably says more about her than her daughter.
'The pictures are amazing, and Sasha is such a lucky girl to have them. I'd love to have those sort of pictures, nice pictures, rather than ones you hide away because you can't bear to look at them.'
It was about the same time she started dabbling in beauty pageants that Jayne declared she wanted her daughter to be the next Jordan. She still does.
'Of course. Jordan is her idol and I fully support her in that. She's a great role model, this really down-to-earth woman who has made a big success of her life. She's a better role model than Britney Spears - any day.'
She maintains it has always been Sasha who has driven her own 'career' forward. Even as a baby she was a 'total poser', playing up for the cameras and basking in the attention.
'She's always wanted to be a model, 100per cent. I'm just helping her do what she wants, like any good parent would. It's not pushing her into anything. I hate it when people say I'm a pushy parent. I'm not. I just want the best for her.'
Yet can 'the best' really involve holding her hand as she steps into a terrifyingly sexualised world? It is Jayne herself who says that her daughter looks 'about 18' when she has full make-up on.
'But, even without make-up, she looks about 13 or 14, certainly older than her age.'
She thinks this is a good thing and brushes off questions about unwelcome male attention.
'People go on about the paedophile thing, but they've got that one wrong. Paedophiles don't want girls who look 18. If anything, it's the fresh-faced younger ones they want.
'And so what if she poses in a bikini? There are plenty of 11-year-old girls on beaches in bikinis. If people have a problem with it, I'd say it is their problem, not mine.
'Besides, as I keep saying, this is what Sasha wants.'
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Daily Mail Other sources:
BBC and
Jezebel