I was prepared to be outraged at this latest Toddlers & Tiaras story until I watched the videos of this family on TLC’s website. (More are below.) The mom isn’t an evil stage mom, she’s an idiot. She’s one of those people who thinks her stupidity is funny and who will annoy you within the first five minutes of having the unfortunate occasion to meet her. She uses racist humor regularly, like saying she she’s the “mammy” when she’s lacing her daughter’s corset and speaking in an exaggerated Asian accent when she’s doing her nails. Some of that has of course rubbed off onto her pageant daughter, but the daughter is still adorable. The little girl seems to realize that her mom is a complete whack job, and the dad seems surprisingly normal.
The mom put her daughter in an ugly corset dress for a pageant, explaining that she’d grown and they needed to suck her in. It’s ironic given how big the mom is. It’s also extreme, but at least the girl is 11, not three or four. Given some of the other insane sh*t we’ve seen on this show, this is bad but not as exploitative. It looks extremely uncomfortable though. Here’s US Weekly’s story on it:
Frankly, my dear, the days of girdles are long gone!
But on Wednesday night’s Toddlers & Tiaras, Sydney’s mom, Marlo, fastened her 11-year-old daughter into a tightly-bound corset.
As Marlo forcefully tied Sydney’s dress, she explained: “It doesn’t matter if you can breathe or not! It only matters if you look beautiful!”
“Could you go sell your soul to the Devil so we could pay for a new [Dress]?” Marlo quipped to Sydney’s father.
She added: “I’m not a crazy pageant mom: I’m an insane one… The doctor says I’ll be just fine with medication and lots of therapy!”
Sydney went on to win Grand Supreme at the International Fresh Faces Missouri Pageant.
“I’m ecstatic she got the Grand [Supreme],” her mom said. “If she’d gotten the Ultimate [Grand Supreme] cool! If she didn’t get the ultimate, hey that’s cool! We still got the Grand [Supreme].”
So who won the Ultimate Grand Supreme? An unexpected blonde girl named Samantha.
“It was crazy, because everyone counted on Maddie or me,” Sydney said matter-of-factly. “But, no! This little girl came along and won the Ultimate today.”
[From US Weekly]
It gets worse in the two other clips of this lady and her poor daughter. They have one of those freaky “reborn” dolls that costs $500 and looks like an actual newborn baby, and the mom brags that she’s had the police called on her for leaving it in the car. She coos to it and says it’s cold and that it reminds her of her daughter Sydney as a baby. At least it’s just a piece of plastic and is not another kid for her to mess up.
I don’t think the corset thing is outrageous, but I don’t think it’s great either.
This woman seems nutso. At least her daughter is adorbs, maybe she’ll end up like her father?
I don’t really care about these people but is their dog a Dachshund? I love little Dachshunds.
These kinds of parents are destroying little girls! They need to be loved, not paraded around like frigging dolls. The ones that are little monsters will grow up to be the biggest bullies at school.
My daughter saw a clip for the show and started saying she wanted to do that, I showed her a part with the girl crying in pain at the prep. She no longer wants to!
I’m not too outraged by the corset.
However, those Reborn Dolls are f$cking freaky as hell. Almost as weird as that doll they made to teach little girls how to breast feed. *shudders*
I think it’s ALL outrageous. Let kids be kids. These women should not be allowed to have children.
These pageants should be illegal.
And if the dad was really normal, he would not let anyone do this to his own daughter.
What I find strange about this show is that most of the moms seem totally frumpy and dumpy and they pour all of their energy and money into these pageants.
i don;t think the “mammy” comment was so much a racial joke as it was a reference to “Gone with the Wind”.
In the scene where Scarlett is getting ready for the picnic at Ashley Wilkes estate, Mammy laced up Scarlett’s corset to get it down to a 17in waist.
Mammy is the character’s name.
and these pageants are disgusting and the mother’s should be ashamed of themselves
I don’t like this programme but find it strangely compelling …
I think Sydney seems like a lovely, well adjusted girl – very happy to be in pageants and not overly sexualised.
Watching the other kid, Paige I think her name was, was really uncomfortable: she clearly did NOT want to do pageants and was an obnoxious brat about it on occasions. Can’t imagine my kids talking to me or other people the way she did (at 6!)…
@ Julie – That’s exactly what I’m thinking too! If those moms just took HALF the money they pour into those parents and joined Weight Watchers, maybe they’d feel better about THEMSELVES and not subject their kids to the pageants! I firmly believe they all force their kids to do the pageants in order to make themselves feel better.
She got on my nerves SO bad. Especially when the “hotel” locked her out of her room. She probably put her keycard next to her cell phone and it deactivated it- but of course it is all the hotel’s fault. And when the woman didn’t come running to open the door, she was pissed.
Sydney (the daughter) was great, though. She was so well spoken and calm (in comparison to the crazy mother), and yeah the doll thing is weird but at least she’s still a young girl and knows it is for play.
Aside from the insane mom, I thought Paige’s mom was pretty horrible. Paige never seemed into the pageant at ALL. She didn’t practice anything, barely smiled during the pageant, and just overall did not want to be there. But Mommy was all “we will keep doing pageants because she likes them!”
Eh, I don’t know. That little girl seems to be more than happy to be in pageants. I save my outrage for the ones that are younger and obviously forced into it…there was another in the same episode that spent pretty much the whole time talking about how she didn’t want to be there. Then they’d interview the mom and she’d say “Oh, my little girl LOVES this she is having SUCH a good time!” Sure, lady.
@ Meghan
On the hotel room thing…did you notice her son kept playing with the handle when she was trying to open the door? I think that was the real problem.
Yes, Sydney, your mom IS crazy. Hopefully, it’s not genetic.
I haven’t seen a single one of these moms (on The Soup clips, because I refuse to watch this shit) who was thin or “pageant-like.”
They are all former pageant wanna-be’s who live vicariously through their daughters.
Disgusting!
I agree with Dad, bathing suit competitions for little girls? No.
Other than that, from the clip the girl seems pretty happy and like a normal 11 year old girl.
As to her nutso-ass mom, ugh. She reminds me of my step mother: big, dumb and laughs at her own stupid jokes. Oh and it sounds like she pisses away money on frivolous stuff like my step mother does.
a corset to suck in an 11-year is probably worse than a corset dress on a toddler because the 11-year is old enough to comprehend exactly why the corset is being used. This is body dysmorphia in the making
The mom is a lunatic but the daughter is absolutely lovely. This is the first T&T clip where I thought the contestant legitimately seemed normal and had a spark of charisma.
The mom is annoying, but I like that kid alot…”I *do* like messing with people, especially in Walmart.”
@mamaT: Mammy was a slave owned by the O’Haras. I think we all got the Gone With The Wind reference, a novel which some find exceedingly racist.
I believe the headline is only a rhetorical question – EVERYTHING connected with Toddlers and Tiaras is always ‘the worst”.
I know this is mean, but maybe the mom should use the corset on herself.
Her daughter is cute as hell, though.
Hee hee, I have to admit from what I’ ve seen, that the daughter seems like a normal, clever and happy kid! Ok, the mom is slightly over the top, but she clearly loves her child… Unlike other videos I’ve seen, they have fun together. And the dad is probably the voice of reason. Meh, I need something else to get outraged with today, more T&T craziness, please!!!
these “mothers” make me stabby.
I agree with Oh Mr Grey.
I don’t know… In some of the clips, I feel like the mom is playing along with the crazy pageant mom thing… Like, she probably is a bit of a stage mom but she seems like she’s definitely “in the know” about how insane moms come across on the show, and is doing her bit to make it entertaining. Even the whole corset thing, it came across as an “in the know” thing where she knows that some of the moms are so bat-shit crazy that they only care how the kid looks and not how they feel, and Marlo here is playing along with that… Just my musings as a drama major though… đŸ˜‰
And Sydney seems to be a really happy, well-adjusted little girl, who is enjoying the whole pageant thing and isn’t being forced like some of the other chicas.
Sydney’s mama is so stupid she put paper on the television and called it paper view. Her mama’s so ugly that not even goldfish crackers smile back. Sydney’s mama is so fat she has been declared a natural habitat for condors! Your pageant mama is so fat she got to pull down her pants to get into her pockets!
No parent should every subject their child to this, I heard of this show especially the mom giving her child fake breast and but implants. I will never watch this scrap!
I love Sydney. She seems to be a classy and well spoken young lady. I wish her all the best in her life.