The Parents’ Television Council is a group of Puritanical fuddy duddies who try to force their version of morality on the rest of society by holding their breath and stomping around until some jelly-spined executive freaks out and gives them what they want. It’s not easy to make them seem like the reasonable party in a situation. In order to do that, you’d have to be so far in the wrong that even heathen, Free Speech zealots like myself think you’re doing something disgusting. You know, something like dressing up a 3-year-old as a famous prostitute and having her strut around a stage during a beauty pageant like a harlot. Oh, hey “Toddlers & Tiaras,” didn’t see you there.
The PTC justifiably lost their damn mind about this, as any rational person would. But they’re not the real story here. No, the real story is the mother, Wendy Dickey, and her attempted defense of the whole situation. I’ve pulled some selected quotes to illustrate what a misguided boob this lady is:
From Entertainment Weekly:
“Well, at this pageant there was an option to do celebrity-wear,” Dickey says. “And we thought about what we could wear with her being a brunette and Julia Roberts is my favorite actress of all time. I thought it was real cute to do Julia. She’s 3, if she was 10 I never would have considered this. But as young as she is I thought it was very comical.
Because if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that sexualizing a 3-year-old is HILARIOUS. By this lady’s reasoning, a picture of a baby in lucite heels leaning against a stripper pole would be, like, double Caddyshack.
Also, dressing her child up like Julia Roberts? Not a problem. Julia Roberts seems like a great lady. Dressing her up like a character Julia Roberts played who had sex with strangers for money? No. Icky. Thank God Sharon Stone wasn’t her favorite actress.
“I’m amazed it’s caused this much of a frenzy,” Dickey says. “The judges loved it. Everybody except one particular mom went nuts over it. It was the cutest thing ever. It was very innocent. A lot probably would have been different if they aired the whole entire routine instead of just the hooker part.”
“ALL THE OTHER CREEPS AND PERVERTS LOVED IT!”
And later, from an interview with TMZ:
Wendy says, “I’m raising my child just as well as any mother does … I take my kid to church every week … at least I’m not forcing them into sports and getting my child injured like some parents.”
Wendy adds, “People need to look at their own family and what they’re doing. I don’t know why people are focusing so much on pageant moms when there’s much more harmful things people are letting their children do!”
“Yeah, at least I’m just injuring my kid psychologically. That doesn’t even count! I mean, you can’t even see the bruises!”
For the record, if I ever have a child, I would sooner let him or her play with discount fireworks while hanging upside-down from rusty monkey bars than compete in a freak show like this. And I didn’t even include the part of this lady’s explanation where she said the outfit was fine because it was more clothing than a bathing suit or a gymnastics uniform, as though the problem was strictly the amount of exposed skin and not the loaded message the whole thing sent.
So congrats, Wendy Dickey. It takes a special kind of monster to get me to stand side by side with the PTC and sing Kumbaya, but you did it.
Here’s the video, if you want to have an aneurysm or never sleep again.
