WHATEVER LOLA WANTS.....

Whenever I'm in the mood to be mortified, which is quite often, I tune in to The Learning Channel on Wednesday nights so I can be educated by a documentary/soap opera called "Toddlers and Tiaras." Each week the show focuses on three or four kid beauty pageant contestants--either the most obnoxious, gushing sweetie pies or the ones who come from the most dysfunctional family in a four-state area.

This week's winner in the Obnoxiously Dysfunctional Division was 3-year-old Lola, a blonde-haired Texas sassy pants who can strut and blow kisses like a street walker--provided she's in the mood. To get Lola to follow instructions, her mother and aunt have created a 1-step behavior modification-type program that works every time. I call it "Sugar Cubes and Pixie Sticks."

Lola is in a foul mood and won't practice her pirouette? Give her a sugar cube. Lola is whining because her 50-pound hairstyle is giving her a headache? Open wide for sugar, baby. Lola just nailed her talent performance? "Sugar cube!!!" she demands for her reward as soon as she bops off the stage.

Little Lola has her family wrapped her sugar-loving little finger. Daddy buys her thousand-dollar glamour gowns, mama shrugs helplessly at her tantrums, and her two older sisters, as homely as Lola is cute, allow themselves to be lost in the background while Lola gets ALL the attention. "Bring me the box of cubes! Now!!"

In spite of the incentives, Lola didn't run away with the Grand National Super Miss Glitz Pageant this particular night, but she did get a heavy-duty queen crown, since she was best of show in the three-year-old division (out of two entrants). I think she'd better milk this pageant stuff for all it's worth while she can, because by the time she's four she's either going to injure herself bouncing off the walls during a sugar high or she'll fall into a diabetic coma.

"Toddlers and Tiaras" needs to be re-named. Something like "Dumb Parents and Domineering Daughters." Sweet.