Another rough day at work. I'm trying to get year end done, and the auditors are on the way now too, so the year end audit fell in my lap. And after getting over $300k in new clients last month, I have more coming! Joy! And of course my year end work has to still be perfect, because my boss is flying to CA to present it this month. Plus, I found a big error in my work that means I have to do a lot of it over, and one of the people I need information from is out of the office this week, and this presentation is due tomorrow. The fun just goes on and on.

I did get my cooking done last night, finally. I ate peanut butter again for lunch yesterday, although I had some of the Nicole Kidman green beans to go with it, that's getting old. I made veggie beef-a-roni with zucchini, which turned out OK, but which I messed up by putting some red wine in it. When you're going for a Chef Boyardee-esque flavor, you just can't use things like wine. The tannins threw my flavor base off, but it's still OK.

I should have gone to bed earlier, but I became fascinated by a documentary on WE called "Painted Babies" about child beauty pageants. I thought JonBenet Ramsey was a fluke - the unusual product of one mother's driving ambition, but that is just not the case. There were rows and rows of these little JonBenet clones marching around on this stage in bizarre, sexualized toddlerhood. It was like a train wreck. I couldn't peel my eyes off of it. Now my sisters did a few pageants when we were kids, but they were nothing like this. The "pros" who were obviously products of numerous lessons and much coaching were the anomaly then. In this, they were the rule. The western wear outfit one of the girls wore cost $1,000.00! I am 40, and I still have never owned any outfit that cost that much. All her competition clothes were custom made, and her mother spent about $3,500.00 per year on pageant outfits. Let me remind you this child was FOUR. She was in this competition for a new car, because her grandmother needed a car.

The most interesting parts were the interviews with the adults. They focused on two mothers whose daughters were the front-runners to win the Miss Southern Charm in Atlanta. The mother of the girl who won was not a terribly attractive woman, and very obviously was living through her daughter, true to stereotype. Her husband wouldn't be interviewed, and apparently did not go to the pageants. When the little girl was crowned, it was the mother who was crying. The girl seemed to take it in stride. By the same token, it was the parents who appeared very excited about the competition. The shots of the kids showed they were mostly bored.

Apparently this is a major pageant. Interviews with the mothers and grandmothers were interspersed with pageant footage and clips of two admittedly pretty 4 year olds in disturbing hooker makeup, either strutting exaggeratedly on stage, or belting out adult songs they could not possibly understand with tone-deaf abandon. So I stayed up an extra hour to see who won, flushing a disturbing hour of my life down the drain.

Favorite quotes:

Grandmother: She was perfect, she looked just like a Barbie Doll up there!

Q: Do you like her looking like a Barbie Doll?

Grandmother: Well she is a Barbie Doll.

***

Pageant organizer (instructing judges):

Now we know they are going to wear makeup, but we want a child who looks natural, and certainly don't want her to appear sexual in any way. Fortunately, with babies, it's almost impossible to have them look sexual.

***

Q: Do you ever have to push her to get her to do this?

A: Well not really push, no, but sometimes encourage. Sometimes she doesn't feel like doing things, just like sometimes I don't feel like getting up and going to work in the morning. But sometimes you have to do things you don't feel like doing.

***

Q: Why do you compete (to child in the pageant)?

A: Well I compete for prizes, and cars, and money money money! (This said with childish glee, while her mother and grandmother beamed in the background.)

***

After it was over, one of the little girls came in third. Her mother was distraught, and y0u could tell she was on the verge of tears. Her father was there, and he seemed upset too. The girl took it better than either of them, reminding them that she was supposed to be a good sport and congratulate the other girls. It was odd to see this 4-year-old child who was apparently more mature than her parents. It was a strange clip.