An unexpected vision of Hell: little girls in drag and their sad, scary mothers

I was having a restless night, flicking randomly through the TV channels when I saw a show that seriously messed up my head. As I watched, I heard that still, small voice that we all have inside, and it whispered to me: "If you ever watch this show again, you are even dumber than everyone thinks you are."

It is called Toddlers and Tiaras, about a beauty pageant for under-12 girls. My first thought as I clicked into the show was "Aw! How cute is that?"

Ten minutes later, I realised that the race for the White House cannot hold a candle to the tatty, catty glitz of Toddlers and Tiaras. If you want to know what Hell will be like, just watch a few episodes of this show.

It's a documentary about modern-day beauty pageants, but the unique twist is that the beauties strutting up and down the runway, looking like miniature drag-queens, are all between five and 12 years old.

They're kids, but on the stage they wear huge, elaborate hairdos and heavy make-up - eye-shadow, false eye-lashes, lipstick, the works - and they sashay down the stage with precocious smiles, high kicks and that tantalising peep over the shoulder.

It's as if a Miss Universe or a Miss World competition had been popped into a time-machine that could shrink the women back to early childhood. They are cute - up to a point - but behind the brash display of these mini-divas stand their mothers.

That is the really scary part. Little girls always want to play dress-up, but when the game is over and they have had their bath, with their faces glowing and their hair shining, they are exactly what they are meant to be - little girls.

That, however, is not what their moms want. They are a clingy cohort of smother-mothers, living vicariously through their kids. What immense pressure that must exert on a child.

I could understand if a child was planning to be an athlete or an artist, striving to become a champion in whichever field he or she chose. In that situation, a mother's protectiveness and careful observation of how that child was feeling would be an invaluable support.

So, here's my question: Could a 10-year-old girl, decked out in outrageous evening gowns, with tinsel in her lacquered hair and her face plastered with cosmetics, possibly be reaching for excellence? Or is it all about "mommy dearest" recapturing - or possibly repeating - her own lost childhood?

It's obvious that some kids are doing this only because their moms tell them to do it. Some of them have fun, but I saw several bewildered little girls, with tight smiles pasted onto their lips, bumbling along the runway, clearly wishing they were on a beach, in a park, or even just at home, playing with their own toys.

But in these pageants, the kids are the toys with which the mothers play, and those mothers are scary. Most of them are overweight, dressed in polyester from top to toe. I felt so sad for them, because what they really want is their 15 minutes of fame. They could not get it for themselves, many years ago, but now, via their daughters' success, the moms also become stars - or do they?

Sadly, even that ploy contains a sour twist. The child is the winner, not the mother. The little girl basking in the spotlight and applause is the winner. The mother is waiting in the wings, and it's a second-hand victory.

The prizes at these events also expose their taste by using overblown, outrageous names. Most beauty pageants usually have a winner and two runners-up; or even a Queen and two princesses. In this kiddie's world, however, the titles are absurdly pompous.

The event I saw was called the "Universal Royalty National Pageant" and the girls were striving to win the "Supreme", the "Grand Supreme" and the crowning glory of the "Ultimate Grand Supreme". How's that for bombast?

This "glittering event" occurs in a hotel conference room in broad daylight. There are no decorations, a few flowers and just a tiny stage with a minimal backcloth on which the kids strut their stuff. Sadly, the prizes are similarly mingy. Even an "Ultimate Grand Supreme" delivers no more than $5000.

That's hardly enough to pay for the travel, the accommodation and the elaborate costumes and cosmetics. Nonetheless, as the episode ended, a mom was telling a TV camera that they have already booked to appear at two future pageants, in the hope that they will get an "Ultimate Grand Supreme" prize that will enable them to "move up" to the next set of teen pageants.

If that mother were to save the cash she spends on flouncy frocks, cosmetics, hair products, dance lessons and singing lessons, she could probably afford to get her daughter into a good school.

That could lead to a vastly different future because, if your only life-achievement is that you were once an "Ultimate Grand Supreme", something has gone badly wrong.