Congratulations to Angels With Attitude February Overall Winner Zoe [l] and 19-35 Months Winner Alli Beth [r], who most successfully represent "a total package 'glitz' child" without falling back on photos which are "extremely or overly retouched." They will receive 50 and 25 Angel Dollars, respectively, which can be redeemed for Pageant registration fees. If you're late for check-in, you "will be disqualified from photogenic," so be on time. And remember, "AWA does not double crown ~ with the exception of Hostesses and Hospitality Winners, and places limits on the number of overalls that may be won by a single contestant ... 1 for royalty and 3 for non-royalty finalists."
At Prelims, "Each division [0-18 mos, 19-35 mos, 3-4, 5-7, 8-10, 11-14, 15-19 day of pageant] will have a Queen and court & winners for most beautiful, most photogenic, best dress, best model, best interview, most personality, prettiest hair, prettiest eyes, and pretties smile, and there will be 1 Grand Supreme Queen. Most events will have a side event (casual wear, swim wear, holiday wear, etc.) and there will be a winner for each division."
March winners are posted, and April results are due soon!
Angels With Attitude [via metafilter]
[01/06 update: wtf, where is everyone coming from all of a sudden? Little Miss Sunshine blows the doors off at Sundance, and suddenly you dogpile onto my site? This post was a commentary which used quotes from an actual infant beauty pageant and "glamour photo retouching" contest that was taken down almost immediately after I posted about it. Because people freaked the hell out about it, and rightly so. This guy cached the whole page, btw.
So if you have more than two neurons firing in your head, you should be able to recognize this as criticism, NOT advocacy. If you don't, and you still want to risk overclocking your pathetic brain by typing idiotic flames, then do it on your own damn blog. damn. ]
Scariest thing ever. I thought this was a beauty contest for those "real dolls" or whatever. You know those freaks that have dolls that the pretend are real babies. I WISH it were a doll contest. Then at least real children wouldn't be permanently scarred in the process.
Only one thing more disturbing than Precious Moments...LIVE ACTION Precious Moments. (shudder)
Somebody call Wes Craven, we got a hit on our hands.
OMG, I couldn't believe my eyes. Do parents _really_ want their kids to look that way, with or without a little digital trickery?
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know the scene in "Rosemary's Baby" where Mia Farrow says "His eyes!! What's wrong with his eyes?! and Ruth Gordon says "He has his father's (the Devil's) eyes."
This reminds me of that.
those kids are almost as frightening as the Quiznos subs kid. yikes.
I agree with christy -- i skipped over this since i thought "oh, man, another one of greg's infatuation-with-dolls postings" [??? -ed.] but then i learned the evil truth.
if you look at the picture winners, only the boy looks like a real kid, probably because it wouldn't be proper to put makeup on a boy. very odd, where these people create their boundaries of decency.
The horror....the horror........
That whole Glamour Shots franchise has a lot to answer for, too.
Some kid's parents are in need of some serious ass-whippins'...
Plus, I am going to ask for a show of hands (and risk a comment-whippin' of my own), who thinks this stuff is the DAD'S idea?
Actually, JJ - I'm thinking this is the work of those moms whose glory days (aka their high school cheerleading careers and prom queen nominations) have passed them by. You know the ladies I'm talking about.
I bet their daddys are too busy spending their weekends at the hunting camp to even care.
(I know I know, could I pile on another stereotype, please . . .)
I phrased myself unclearly.... I meant OF COURSE THIS IS NOT THE DAD'S IDEA!
It's like the pageant version of Sports Kids Moms and Dads show, you know that show where you want to go kidnap the children and put them in some sort of safe house. Let them drink chocolate milk and tell them everything will be ok.
Also, I want to admit that I have been known to photshop a snotty nose or glob of food before printing out photos, but never have I literally airbrushed the life out of someone.
I am gonna go boil my eyes now.
Those pictures are hideous. I would have thought that Jon Benet's death would put the kibosh on this sort of thing, but obviously no such luck.
I couldn't help it, I clicked over to the site to see the other photos. It's one of the most horrible things I've ever seen. Piling stereotype on stereotype, I noticed that the site's host is "Faithweb." Faith in what? The ability to make your children look like scary wax figurines?
I was astonished to see that one of the winning tots was from Brooklyn.
And then I realized that I had misread it. Her name is Brooklyn.
The only "photoshopping" I've done was remove a scratch from my daughters nose on a photo we wanted to put on a mug for grandma...
OK, no, this is not OK, on any level.
However, my horror is really with the 0-18 month category, that is just plain child abuse. Imagine the amount of energy and taunting/cajoling/bribeing/forcing you would have to do in order to put LIQUID EYELINER ON YOUR ONE YEAR OLD. Horror is certainly one word that comes to mind, negligent, insensitive and selfish are a few others.
There was a recent documentary on this 'phenom' and man, it was saaaaaaaaaadd-D.
Those aren't humans! They're pod people!
It has to be ex-cheerleader type mothers. No father I know of would want to whore up their daughter like that.
Photoshop. The eyes especially have been Photoshopped p the wazoo.
Terrifying. Plain terrifying. I thought eyelashes that resembled spider's legs were supposed to be a bad idea...as for those eyes, OY!
And another thing...what child under a year has that much hair???
I especially like how the eyes have been copy-pasted and flipped for perfect symmetry, as well as the complete absence of any of that pesky "texture", as though skin should be completely featureless. Everyone knows you don't need the soft-focus filters until your career has ground to a halt and you're doing infomercials. They do know that the whites of the eyes aren't actually white, right? These girls are going to grow up complete messes. Good luck on keeping the merchandise spotless, complete with the all-important Virginity. After all, their purpose is to please other people. Grrrrr.
I swear their eyebrows are plucked, who would do that to an innocent baby? and why on earth would anyone want their baby to look like a hard up avon lady?
The contest rules state that photos should not be "Overly or extremely retouched." I can't imagine what the rejected photos look like.
This got mentioned in Gene Weingarten's weekly online chat at the Washington Post site, which I recommend if you need yet another way to waste time online.
The site's been taken down in the meantime.
these are pretty pictures of pretty children but they have no business wearing so much make-up. One of the beautiful things about kids is their natural beauty. Kids need nothing to enhance their beautiful faces, make-up only makes them look trashy and fake (like a doll). I would never put make-up on my little child.
And people wonder why there is so much kiddie porn!