This post is actually one week late. I had meant to write it last week, but I guess I was just too laggy to get about it.

Anyway, I went to the new Cathay Cineplex to watch "Little Miss Sunshine" with a few friends on Sunday. The movie was so-so. I kind of enjoyed it but I wouldn't say I like it that much. Yes, there were moments when I laughed out loud but the movie didn't appeal to me as much as it did for my friends.

Tyle had said that if I like "Garden State" (which I do immensely), I would like this movie. But for some strange reason, I don't. Maybe because it's a family comi-drama and I am so not a fan of family dramas, especially dysfunctional ones.

But this post is not so much about that, it's about the last part of the movie: the beauty pageant for pre-pubescent girls that Olive was so enthusiastic about. And no, it's not about Olive's routine for the talent section. It was the other contestants. They bothered the hell out of me. And I believe I am not the only one.

The directors were smart enough to build it up slowly. First they showed them getting dolled up backstage with one getting her tan sprayed on, then they showed them in their gowns with heavily made up face and hairdo that seemed too big for their head before letting them appear in their swim suits - your typical beauty pageant routine.

But what really freaked the hell out of me and my friends was when they appeared in their swimsuits that leave little to the imagination. These were just mere girls who were not even in their teens and yet they were dressed like child-whores with their ridiculously adult over-the-top hairdo, makeup and skanky swim suits. Echoes of JonBenét Ramsey? You tell me.

My friends and I were practically shouting "Oh my god! That's sick! Sick! Sick!" That's how bothered we were. I normally don't say much during a movie, but my reaction this time was instantaneous.

And you know what's even more shocking? All the girls in the pageant (except for Abigail Breslin who was acting as Olive) were real-life former contestants of other beauty pageants. All of them looked the same and performed the very same acts as they did in their real-life pageants.

Are these little girls at fault? No, it's the parents as well as the organisers themselves who are all complicit in this awful charade. And I am not just referring to those in the movie but to all the other real-life pageants out there as well.

For crying out loud, they are just little girls. Let them be little girls and not make them out to be something they are not.

Maybe their parents are trying to live their dreams through their daughters, I don't know. But why can't they at least wait till they are much older? Or better yet, let them live their own lives.

You may say that I am a provincial country bumpkin who doesn't know much about the world and should just accept it. But the whole thing just seems so wrong to me. Or am I wrong?

And you know what the best irony in that movie was? That's when the plain slightly out of shape Olive did her striptease number to "Superfreak" and shocked the hell out of the organising judge and the other parents watching the pageant. These are the very same people who encourage and dress the contestants up as child-whores.

Maybe it's just me. Maybe the rest of the world sees the whole thing as something very cute and adorable.

Labels: movies