little bitty girl

For some reason, Stefan and I managed to squeeze in two DVD rentals this weekend. I know that this may not sound like some reason to blog but I really don't watch a lot of movies. I never know how the heck I do well in those Oscar competitions. I think maybe because I watch all the award shows for the fashions?

With The Departed, I found it *yawn* super boring. I didn't find it interesting or original. Even the violence became a little mundane after awhile. Somehow, I feel like this movie was the pity Oscar for a talented director who has been missed too many times (according to the academy anyway). I don't know, maybe I am just not a mobster type of movie watcher to really appreciate it. I started falling asleep toward the end.

Little Miss Sunshine was SUCH an unexpected delight. I never know what to make of movies that get too many good reviews. There has been so many times when I've been disappointed from all the hype. This was not one of those times. I loved all the characters in this movie. Everyone was a little off, a little raw, a little unpolished -- how people in real life really are. Just the name of the little girl -- Olive was so unexpected and whimsy! The funny thing about this movie is that on paper, it seemed like it could have have been so cheesy. A dysfunctional family, whose young daughter enters a pageant and the whole family goes on a road trip in a vintage VW bus. And yet, it was so fun, heart warming and real.

So I am about to say something and I hope people don't mind that I am not going to be very PC about it. (I'm sorry, pageant mamas everywhere!) but....

I think pageants especially for little girls are so fucked. It was such a mind warp to watch those girls in their bikinis posing like women. They're bloody seven or eight and they were getting their makeup and hair done. It's just not normal. They should be outside getting scabs on their knobby knees, chasing their friends around and not caring if they have dirt on their faces. Girls get enough pressure to be someone they're not from so many societal things (movies, fashion, magazines) that I feel that one's childhood should be sacred from all that.

From watching documentaries about pageants, many families often say that it's what the girls have always wanted and that if they ever wanted to stop, they would. I must admit that I am very skeptical of that because I just can't imagine a little girl without being influenced at all, wanting to go through all that bullshit.

I hope someone will shoot me before I permit something like that happening to my own kid. And if my kid really, really wants to, I am just going to have to make Stefan do it. I don't think I can deal with all that frothy pinkness.