No Makenzie? I’m outta here. I’m sorry. I’m not doin’ it.
Here’s to another season. Work it. Own it. Be Fierce.
Covergirl. Stroll down the runway. Another payday.
‘Nuff said.
Did you notice?
There was nobody at the Mall tonight.
Or on the subway. Even the highways were empty.
It was like something terrible had happened that I wasn’t aware of, and suddenly all of America was home hiding out with their families trembling in terror.
But then I remembered.
And it wasn’t terrible.
It’s awkwardly and embarrassingly fabulous, in that hate to admit it kind of way as long as no one knows and you don’t mention it at work tomorrow even if someone else brings it up first.
Toddlers & Tiaras is back!
And it’s back with a vengeance.
The show that everyone is always talking about, and that everyone always has an opinion about even though no one ever admits to actually watching the thing, is back.
And to make up for lost time they revved the Twinkle Truck from 0 to 60 in the first 3 seconds of the new season premiere.
And that truck was fully decorated for the Holiday Season.
It was time for the Southern Celebrity Glitzmas Pageant. In New Jersey. Yeah. Jersey.
I guess the Twinkle Truck doesn’t have GPS.
First we get to meet Pageant Mom Katie, who introduces us to her two little home schooled pageant kids Bob and Riley. They’re both all smiley and tousled in that never leave the house kind of way. Sister Riley has big jiggly eyes like a Marie Osmond doll and Bob has a really long rat tail strand of hair in the back that Mom beads for him like he’s a two legged My Little Pony.
Apparently this long tail, especially when it is freshly beaded, gives Bob some kind of Pokemon Pageant Power that he is able to harness and use to his advantage on the runway. He whips it around like Willow Smith fighting the bad guys with Pikachu by her side. Google it. It’s a pretty funny analogy if I do say so myself.
Katie lets the world know right from the start that she only had these kids so she could do pageants. Seriously. She done went and got herself with child so she could do pageants. Knocked up for a crown. A beauty bun in the oven.
Anyway you say it….it’s just…I don’t know.
Can you imagine that date night? “The Country Buffet was really good tonight. You wanna go home, watch some TV Land and make pageant babies?”
When she found out that Bob was going to be born a Bob and not a Roberta, she proudly admits that she was upset. (Are you keeping a checklist of issues that Bob will need to discuss with someone ten years from now?) After he was born, and she had the doctors check five times to verify the boy parts, he grew up wearing dresses on and off. And she “just went with it.”
Randomly between all these emotionally scarring revelations, Riley blinks her big jiggly eyes, simply states “Beauty hurts” and then goes back to her stuffed animals while Bob gets all Animé with his hair.
Before I hyperventilated we moved on to Mom Lauren and pint sized blondie Laila. She’s teenie. She’s 3. She can barely hold her own head up yet. She’s a cutie.
Lauren is a text book money’s no object mom. Little Laila gets all the best clothes. She doesn’t scrimp. And she doesn’t use outdated dresses like some of those…poor…people do at pageants. The Moral of the Story is that you lose because you can’t afford to win. Forget hard work and perseverance and believing in your dreams. Poor people don’t stand a chance. End of story.
When she gets old enough to actually understand what Mom just said, that should send little Laila out into the Real World with almost no sense of reality. No money. No honey.
While Lauren went off to buy her daughter’s future, sassy Anna-Maria and Mom Crystal booty bounced onto the screen. Well, Mom did more bouncing. That’s her thing.
MmmHmm, girlfriend. It was The Real Housewives of Atlanta meets one of those big rock concert hoses that shoots glitter and confetti up into the air. Crystal knows her daughter is a STARR (with two “R’s” Miss Thang…) and is crazy proud of that little drama queen. Mom is a riot but kinda sorta follows Lauren’s lead on what it takes to win.
But instead of money…it’s skinny. She keeps Anna backing that thing up with exercise and hoola hoops so she can stay fit and pretty. Apparently fat girls don’t win nuthin.
Even if they’re Phat Girls.
Anna has already picked up on some of Mom’s cues, and knows that she needs to stay lean and mean to bring home the green. She might also get the crown for most drastic Before & After change.
Waking up as a normal, borderline Urkel girl with glasses and a sideways ponytail that she totally must have done by herself without her glasses on, Anna pulls those readers off like a Bad Girl Music Video librarian and suddenly she is one cute pageant girl.
When Crystal plops a weave on the top of all that, Anna is almost unrecognizable. She is going to be a stunner when she gets contacts. You heard it here first.
Mom looooves her baby girl, you can tell. And she loves her Baby Daddy, even though he keeps leaving her. In a brief moment of TMI, Crystal lets us in on the fact that Baby Daddy doesn’t believe in pageants and when Crystal wouldn’t give them up he hit the road. But then he came back. He always does. Because no man can resist the Booty Bounce.
Practice time is always family quality time. And nobody can practice like Katie and the kids. They know how to work it. They know how to be fierce. They know how to sashay and shante.
But it’s hard work. Really hard work. Pageants are a drag. A Drag Queen.
That’s right, bitches. RuPaul is Katie’s muse. Her inspiration for all things Pageant.
She and her husband in the Target polo shirt love Drag. They go to drag shows. They watch drag shows on TV. They let their 5 and 6 year old kids watch drag shows. And in one quick little snippet that somehow made it past the censors and Child Services, Katie lets it slip that they took the kids to a drag show.
Hold up.
When you were 5 did you know the proper technique for a drag queen tuck? No wonder Riley keeps saying “Beauty Hurts.” I’ll wait if you want to grab some duct tape and try it before we move on to the next gem.
Bob’s intro in the pageant itself actually states that he likes decorating.
Find me one 6 year old in this universe that likes to decorate. Again, I’ll wait.
If that’s his thing, more power to him. But he could start practicing on his house right now, because the whole place was on Velcro Holiday Overload.
I just made that term up right now. Somehow, between drag shows, Katie managed to find the time to take every piece of holiday decor that Walmart sells in that outside garden department (after they get rid of the lawnmowers…) tossed it in the air, and wherever it stuck it stayed. Somebody watching this show had to have had a seizure with all that visual stimulation.
Katie passes on all the knowledge that the Queens teach her to her own pageantly procreated children so they can be just as fierce. And it’s a good thing, because Riley’s other Pearl of Wisdom is that when she loses her “heart is small and black.”
I know, right?
Fierce may not be able to keep up with the Booty Bounce, though, because Anna is working those Hoops. Mom points out that White girls know poise, but African American girls are saucy. (And have no poise, if you read between the lines. I’m not touching that one.)
Little Laila manages to get her bobble head steadied enough to practice ballet with Miss Debbie. I can’t really do justice in describing Miss Debbie and her leotard and tutu. Just DVR it. Or watch RuPaul.
And then there was Riley and Bob’s dog. Or dawg.
Did I mention he wears a diaper?
Let’s sum this one up. A giant old dog, wearing a diaper, wandering aimlessly through a Velcro Holiday Wonderland while two little children pretend to walk like drag queens while flipping their Pokemon hair and hoping they win so their heart doesn’t get black.
You. Can’t. Make. This. Stuff. Up.
Katie keeps the cupboard stocked with Puppy Pampers because she wants to keep her home beautiful. She would kill to make it look like they stepped out of a magazine. I think when she said it some tinsel actually fell off the curio cabinet and onto the rug.
Somebody’s diaper is going to glitter in another day or two.
I guess once he’s got his diaper taped on he’s not much of a watch dog anymore, so at least that explains the front yard completely covered by an army of plastic and inflatable holiday characters standing guard. If I was looking to steal a WebTV I would totally skip that house and move on down the block. Who needs a dog when you can’t even get past 12 snowmen and a nutcracker soldier?
To completely finish me off, Katie dropped the final bombshell and let us all know that 5 year old Riley once sung Lady Gaga’s Poker Face while standing and dancing on the bar at Applebee’s…but not like a stripper. And no one threw dollar bills.
After I remembered eating a peanut straight off the bar at Applebee’s one time, I think I blacked out for a second because all of the sudden it was Pageant Day.
Like all the other pageants, the actual event is never as much fun as everything that leads up to the big day. It’s not possible.
The hotel was full of empty chairs, pixie stix were flowing like crack pipes and Crystal was rocking a seriously Snookie poof.
Since it was Jersey and all. C’mon.
But really, who won isn’t nearly as important as the fact that Toddlers & Tiars is back.
In your spray tanned face.
Sparkle, baby.
