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Toddlers and Tiaras: The aftermath

Reality TV has the reputation of dehumanizing people, but my brief experience on it was to the contrary. In the fall, I judged a Universal Royalty pageant that was filmed for Toddlers and Tiaras (read 5,000 words of my thoughts about that here). The episode finally aired this week (I was interviewed for the show, and you can see a reel of my screen time here). Watching the early portion of the episode, which chronicled the preparation for the pageant (as every first half of a Toddlers and Tiaras episode does), was eye-opening, primarily because it was incredible to see the children that I judged actually look like children.

Isys doesn't wear glasses onstage (a lesson from the early part of the episode: her mother doesn't know "how she sees" but is convinced that she does). If she did wear them, though, I would have certainly given her a 10+ on facial beauty. That would have been a bold and endearing choice. Glasses on kids! That is heartbreaking and adorable.

I judged a child beauty pageant

Last month, I judgded a child beauty pageant that was taped for Toddlers & Tiaras. I covered this for work. You can watch video, see pictures and read my write-up here. I don't need to say that it was amazing, but it was amazing.

My narrative was actually several times the length of what's running in The Daily today, and with my editor's permission, I am posting the writer's cut below. Everything you ever wanted to know about attending 12 hours of a child beauty pageant and scoring children should be below. If it isn't, let me know because I'm sure I can tell you.

Make like a cat, and go back to bed!

 

It is, after all, Monday.

BTW, sorry to double up on Winston subject matter, but the snoring above annihilates this snoring. True fact!

Neglected in '10: The I Think We're Alone Now commentaries

For the next several days, I'll be touching on stuff that happened and/or was released last year that I never got around to writing about. We all need ways to make our year-to-year transition easier -- this is mine.

I Think We're Alone Now, a film that follows a middle-aged man with Asperger's and a younger, intersex woman who are united through their (current!) love of '80s flash-in-the-pan teen pop sensation Tiffany, is one of my favorite documentaries of all time (it's just behind Paris Is Burning and Living Dolls on my list). I've said so much about it already, but that was before I listened to the commentaries on the DVD of the film that was released several months after I wrote about it.

Wow.

Both Jeff (Asperger's) and Kelly (intersex) provide their own commentary tracks, which work as both updates on their lives and opportunities for meta-voyeurism, as these people (who were followed in the first place because of their unique world views) look at themselves in the mirror of documentary filmmaking and report back. If you found the movie (or the likes of it) exploitative and off-putting, you will find this encouraged stream-of-consciousness harrowing; if you loved the opportunity to visit with people who are clearly like no one else on this earth, you'll love these tracks just as much. Jeff's is the drier of the commentaries (he calls it a "voice over" for whatever reason). He does, though, reveal that Tiffany has Asperger's and that Alyssa Milano has the "rare combination" of both Asperger's and sociopathy. (By the way, both Tiffany and Alyssa have filed restraining orders against Jeff for separate instances.) He says that Kelly tried to kill herself after Tiffany got married (a tidbit that is probably best not revealed regarding your silent competitor for the title of Biggest Tiffany Fan of All Time) and that Tiffany once said to him, "There are a lot of things that we talk about that shouldn’t be heard by most people." This may very well be true, but he takes it as a compliment. Whoops.

Kelly's track is something of a goldmine of good quotes...

A case for vicarious living

When TLC premiered the pageant documentaries Painted Babies at 17 and Toddlers & Tiaras last month, my inbox brimmed with heads-ups and queries. How would I cover the two most recent entries in a genre that is near to my often conflicted sense of humor? I wouldn't at all (for lack of time, original ideas and a Swan-like muse)...until now. Below is a montage of reliable hilarity from these docs: shots of the parents and coaches miming along and performing what the kids are doing on stage. It's really saying something when you can achieve ridiculousness beyond a toddler with fake hair, teeth, eyelashes and a fuzzy glow to suggest living airbrushing. Pageant parents, I salute you:

All my t-shirts

Here's just a quick, albeit late-in-the-day rundown of all the T-shirts I devised up for the inaugural edition of Neighborhoodies' Think Ups series (as first mentioned here), starting with today's offerings, which are probably the most pertinent to readers of this blog:

As much as I love them both, I have to say that I'm partial to the Rudy design. They truly captured his essence. At last, Rudy wins at something!

The rest of the designs (Tyra, Jodeci, Stevie B and Swan Brooner) are after the jump...

Read it or wear it! Read it or wear it!

I'm really flattered to be able to announce this: Neighborhoodies approached me to contribute to their new Think Ups program. The way it works, per the press release, is that "the Neighborhoodies staff chooses one blogger, writer, artist, or all-around cool person a week, and asks them to come up with one pop culture-referencing t-shirt idea a day, for one week." And so, everyday this week, a new T-shirt concept born of my brain will be unveiled. (I'm not taking credit for the actual design work, btw -- that's all Neighborhoodies. I just came up with the ideas.)

I made each of them relevant to this blog (and, by extension my interests: seriously, the biggest reason I agreed to take part is that I'm brimming with T-shirt ideas and it's time I made some a reality). There's no one better, in my opinion to help launch this initiative than Swan Brooner. Here's the first design:

You can order it here in whatever color, on whatever color. And you can check back to the Think Ups fourfour page everyday this week for a new design. But don't worry if you can't keep up. I'll do a roundup of them all at the end of the week, because I'm annoying like that.

Doll Boys

I just want to give a brief heads-up on this great Radar article "Queen of Tots," which examines on the role of gay men in child beauty pageants. The point that the pageant circuit is something of a sanctuary for homosexuals in the South adds yet another mind-blowing layer to this lifestyle that is endlessly fascinating. (I clearly think so, in any event.)

Beyond the gay stuff, there's, of course, some justification of child pageantry. My favorite talking point comes from a quote from pageant judge Ray Smith (whose roots on judging criteria, by the way, are in drag shows): "The world is competitive, and parents want their kids to be able to get by without them. That can be done through giving them the best possible education or by straightening their teeth with braces, and I think pageants are just another way to help them get an edge in life." Uh, I think I agree...maybe? The social-Darwinism perspective is, at least, the best explanation I've heard in support of encouraging children to look and act like whores of Broadway.

Anyway, read the article. For real. Do it.

(Shout out to Tracie, without whose heads-up, I could not deliver mine.)

An update of sorts comes via email from a former child-pageant contestant, Heather E., who talks about her subliminal education in tolerance, among things:

I still value my pageant experience.  It taught me to not be afraid to speak in public, make friends easily, have a good sense of self, and be confident in myself and my abilities, such as they are.  I also think it taught me tolerance without even meaning to.  By the time I came to understand what "gay" was, it wasn't even an issue for me, other than the fact that these fabulous guys would never be interested in me in "that way."  A loss for me, but a gain to others.  I've never understood the intolerance people show towards others' sexuality.  What business is it of mine whom you love?  I'm just glad you love someone.  I believe being exposed to diversity at an early age made me aware that not everyone was exactly alike, that being different is an asset not a liability, and people are just people no matter what.  I think if you'd ask other women that participated in pageants during their formative years, you'd find similar sentiments.  I'm still dismayed that the shows on pageants only ever seem to focus on the negative instead of the positive, but having lived in that world myself for a time, I know that there is a lot of good to be had by participating.

Is this Swan Brooner?

Being that my obsession with Swan Brooner (the loose-toothed center of my favorite documentary, Living Dolls) is unrelenting, I think it's only appropriate to post updates whenever they occur. Today, a reader named Jayne sent me a link to a newspaper based in Alaska (where Swan supposedly moved to live with her father after her mom died of cancer) that last year named Swan as a runner up in some essay contest. I blew the picture up above, but here's a slightly cropped version of the original:

In the caption in the link above, you can see that Swan is named the second in from the right in the back row (despite the fact that the girl all the way to the right has the sharp, gaunt face Swan's mother was rocking in the documentary). If that's really Swan, I have to get corny and admit that it warms my heart to see her smiling. It's nice to know that she's out there, even if it's via a cameo. (And hopefully this isn't another one of those bogus updates.)

(Swan, for the record, is still No. 1 on my interview wishlist. If you're out there, girl, call me! You can make like Thomas Pynchon and show up blurry in group shots and do the mystique thing and make 'em say uhh or whatever, but understand that it doesn't have to be that way!)

Swan Brooner: Not a Duckling, Not Yet a Woman

A reader by the name of "O" tipped me off to this post on the howtheylooknow LiveJournal that's dedicated to my homegirl Swan Brooner (of Living Dolls). Apparently, this is how she looks now, at age 13:

No idea what the source is, or if this is even real, but I'd love to believe that it is. She's cute. People on that LJ thread compared her to Shanna Moakler and Candace Cameron, but you know who she looks like the most to me? Cristy from my favorite episode of Intervention! Really, it's all about those eyebrows and that hair color/texture. I really hope that this doesn't mean that Swan's on meth.

Oddly, an email from someone requesting to remain anonymous who didn't seem aware that this Swan shot leaked yesterday, wrote me just a few hours after that email from O. The subject of anon's email? "update on swan brooner." Two shots of Swan in one day? My soot-covered, page-boy-cap wearing, "Where-hair-hair-hair is love" singing heart could barely take it. Anyway, the email covered most of the post Living Dolls stuff any rightful obsessive already knows: Swan's mom died soon after the documentary was released. Swan went to live with her dad in Alaska, and then he died, as well. Swan's doing well in Alaska -- she's a cheerleader and on the honor roll. I'm not sure how accurate this is because someone posted on that LJ thread that Swan's sister Silva has custody of Swan, and Silva's now-private MySpace lists her as living in Virginia. Hmmm.

Anyway, the real dirt of the email came from a supposed conversation with Swan's brother, the lovable mischief magnet, Bubba, who said that Swan's mother, Robin Browne, was bipolar "which manifested on Swan." No idea what that means, but it sounds unfortunate, as does the added tidbit that none of the money that Swan won went to her (but fair enough, probably: it all, I guess had to funnel back into paying for the pageants, as Robin spent like $70,000 on that shit, per Dolls).

So that's what I know. Take it with the normal grain of salt you would with any "reporting" you see on a blog. It strikes me that I'm pretty obsessively invested in these strangers' lives, but I think that's just testament to the film's effectiveness. I can't think of anyone on earth (not even Mariah Carey!) that I'd want to interview more than Swan. If anyone has connections, hook it up!

Oh, and finally: also per that LJ thread, it seems that someone has reupped Living Dolls to YouTube. It lives even though my account does not. Anyway, this is awesome news -- to watch it, check out KayOhhBabyy's videos. She has a ton, so you'll have to look through them, but all nine parts of Living Dolls are up. Now you can fall in love all over again. Here's Part 1: