Toddlers And Tiaras -- The Pirate Pageant
This episode really highlighted a basic fact: if you're living on a shoestring budget, doing these kiddies pageants is beyond your means. Granted, the Honey Boo Boo Clan is poor and are able to do it, but we've also seen what they have to do to be able to do it: they eat roadkill instead of buying fresh meat and dumpster dive for their clothes. For an ordinary poor family kiddie pageants is just beyond your means and you need to accept that because you may enter the pageants but you won't win.
In Kileen, Texas Beth is a poor mother who wants her daughter Elesha 5, to do kiddie pageants. She's had her do three so far, and she hasn't won anything, yet. She buys Elesha a new dress to compete. It a black dress, but not what the judges consider to be one of those over-priced cupcake glitz dresses. Elesha also doesn't have a routine for her costume portion [she basically just stands there swinging a sword for Pirate Wear]. And when she's doing beauty, she leaves the stage before she's supposed to and has to come back on stage, again. I'm not sure if she'd have won a higher price inspite of her not being glitzed out if she'd done everything else better. The judges say Beth doesn't know what you need to do for these pageants. The only reason Elesha walks away with a Princess title is because all the girls get a princess title, otherwise she would have probably walked away with nothing. Afterwards, Elesha cries because she didn't win anything and wants to go home, while Beth decides she'll stick to smaller pageants. No, Beth, why don't you give up this pageant nonsense because you don't have the money to do it. She claims she's doing it to make Elesha overcome her shyness, but why not just enroll her in dance class, which would probably be a lot cheaper.
In Bridge City, Texas is the antithesis of Beth and Elesha. They're Daisy 8 and her mother April. They live in a very expensively decorated home. April has bought Daisy a pageant dress that cost more than her own wedding gown did. Daisy says she's a dancing queen. Daisy is the perfect kiddie pageant contestant. She knows exactly what she needs to do to win, and she ends up winning Ultimate Grand Supreme.
In Monroe, Louisana you have someone in between poor Beth and rich April. Her name is Broughnman and her 4 year old daughter, Paetynn. Paetynn proclaims herself a rock star. Guess she's been listening too Charlie Sheen. Paetynn likes to draw all over the walls and she's been in 100 pageants starting when she was one and a half.
Broughnman knows how to save some pennies that enable her to do these pageants right even though money is an issue for her, as well. She gets her mother to make Paetynn's outfits which saves a lot of money. In the true tradition of a lot of these pageant kids, Paetynn is quite the little brat. She has a temper tantrum and won't wear her flipper. And like all of these bratty pageant kids, she loves her daddy, and hates her mommy. Probably because mommy is making her do these pageants. The only way Paetynn will go on stage is because daddy manages to come her down. Paetynn manages to win Beauty Supreme.
