People Magazine is featuring Toddlers & Tiaras on their cover this week, and it’s a good idea frankly. The show is getting a ton of attention after all the ridiculous exploitative stunts the mothers have been pulling. I can see People selling a lot more copies with this little JonBenét lookalike than last week, when they featured Kate Gosselin and her kids. I watched about one episode of this show last season, but lately I’ve only seen the clips that make it online and on The Soup and they’ve gone beyond anything that would be considered normal and acceptable parenting. You know that People is going to whitewash it though, and just mention the controversy and quote a few “experts” about how this is harmful to kids without passing judgment. That’s what they do.

Here’s the teaser article from People’s site:

For nearly three years, the hit TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras has captured the drama behind the scenes in the world of child beauty pageants. The tantrums were extreme, and the pre-show prep of spray tanning and eyebrow waxing seemed perhaps premature for little kids.

But in the last few weeks, as footage of 3- and 4-year-olds dressed in overly adult costumes (like Dolly Parton, complete with padded breasts, or Julia Roberts’s streetwalker from Pretty Woman hit the airwaves, viewers and pageant skeptics have been expressing horror at an industry that is now accused of “sexualizing” young girls.

“Little girls are supposed to play with dolls, not be dolls,” New York-based licensed clinical social worker Mark Sichel tells PEOPLE in its new issue, on newsstands now.

He adds that the extremes parents go to in order to prepare their children for competition – using padding, fake hair, flippers (faux teeth) and spray tans – “causes the children tremendous confusion, wondering why they are not okay without those things.”

Now devoted pageant moms are speaking out in their own defense. Wendy Dickey, who dressed her daughter Paisley, 3, as Julia Roberts, tells PEOPLE the look was “tasteful and funny.” Still, “If I knew there would be a reaction like this, I never would have used it,” Dickey says. “Next time, she’ll be dressed as an angel.”

And Juana Myers, whose daughter MaKenzie has been featured on Tiaras, says unfair scrutiny has been placed on the pageant industry. “If this were a sport, no one would question it,” she says. “This is her sport.”

[From People]

That same “this is like sports” argument is the one that the mother of that little three year-old dressed in the Pretty Woman hooker costume made. I checked and that little girl was named Paisley, so here are two mothers saying the same thing. Only in sports the kids are competing in teams, and even in individual sports the focus is on their performance and skill in a specific way, not on their appearance or personality. I do think it’s harmful. I don’t think all pageants should be outlawed or anything, and I’m sure there are harmless examples and these are the extreme, but there should be some more oversight. A lot of you mentioned how horrifying it was to hear adults laughing and jeering from the audience when that little girl strutted out in the Julia Roberts prostitute-type dress, having no clue what was going on other than the fact that she was being judged. She of course went on to win the title. I guess for people in that insane insular community, this is normal and it’s not considered exploitative. At least it’s getting exposed, I guess.

These screenshots and quotes from the show are via ONTD.