I came across a video from an episode of Toddlers & Tiaras. This clip features Alana Holler,a 6 year old pageant beauty queen. Her family participates in the art of extreme couponing to afford to put her through pageants to…..well….win more money. Harmless enough right?
Then you hear the girl talk. I ignored the southern “Hey Boo” drawl that she picked up from God knows where and focused on some of the things she was saying. The one thing that obviously stuck out was the phrase “A dolla makes me holla Honey Boo Boo”.
Now where in the world does a 6 year old get something like that? Innocent as it may seem, if this little girl was 10-15 years older and still singing that phrase, she’d be labeled as a gold digger. Is she being put in training? Granted, she is winning her own money, and her parents are doing some extreme saving to get her through those pageants. On the flip side, they’re instilling in her that her looks going to get her through life and that other people will pay for it, and of course “a dolla will make her holla”. Do you think the lines are drawn clearly enough for Miss Alana to be able to determine what she’s supposed to do for herself and what someone else is supposed to do for her?
I don’t watch enough Toddlers & Tiaras to be able to tell you the answer to that. In my own opinion, a gold digger (or any habit honestly) can be taught, learned and become lifelong behavior at an age even earlier than 6. There are some young girls who are groomed to become gold diggers. It happens more often than you know. Yes, under most circumstances it’s more direct and straight to the point. They’re being taught by their mother who either is a gold digger herself or doesn’t want her daughter to have to go through working all her life the way she did. With some of these pageant girls, without proper guidance they believe that their looks will get them everything they need. They don’t realize that the make-up is doing major damage to their faces and they’re aging faster than most girls their age. They also don’t realize that for a vast majority of them, pageants aren’t forever and they’ll have to work. Be careful what you say or do around your daughter, you could be embedding certain values in her and not even realize it.
