As polite society makes a steady decline into the sewer, little shocks me anymore. The sole reason I Do Believe I Came with a Hat exists is to right the wrongs of those who consistently flout the rules of social nicety and good taste and exemplify the good behaviour of those who conduct themselves in an upstanding and appropriate manner. That was until the army of child super skanks appeared.

It’s a concerning trend: children who are sexualised, exploited and fawned upon by their crazed parents whether for profit, their own gratification or to exercise their aspirations vicariously through their offspring. I was horrified last week to read an article in the UK’s The Sun about a woman who injects her daughter with Botox in the hope of preventing the onset of wrinkles in order to aid her daughter’s beauty pageant career. The Birmingham mother and beautician, Kelly Campbell also performs “virgin waxing” on her daughter Britney so as to prevent the development of leg and pubic hair when she hits puberty in just under a decade. Sadly, Britney has grown accustomed to the practice and demands her mother give her more when she spies a wrinkle in the mirror. She is eight years old.

Then there’s the poor man’s JonBenét Ramsey, Eden Wood who—like her predecessor—lives fast to die young struts about in tarty costumes and shakes her booty like a twenty-five-year-old stripper all in the name of beauty pageantry. Boasting in excess of 13,000 fans on Facebook, she dominates the beauty pageant circuit in the United States and aspires to be a rockstar. See her in action (with her pushy stage mother cheering her on in the background) with this nightmare fuel:

And now there’s the oh-so aspirationally-named Aniston, whose enabling mother has provided a $12,000 eighth birthday party reminiscent of the orgies of consumption on MTV’s My Super Sweet 16.

“I’m having a rock star party,” Aniston reveals on TLC’s “Outrageous Kid Parties.” The family is expecting 100 guests to the event that is to include a pink and black Hummer limo, fireworks, carnival rides, 50 bounce houses and a rotating cake! “We’re gonna have a microphone disco ball,” Aniston says of her birthday party. “My cake is gonna be really expensive and it’s gonna be big.”

“You can’t put a price tag on my daughter’s happiness even though there’s a large price tag on this one,” her mother says of the ordeal.

The last time I checked, eight was not milestone birthday. What is there to celebrate about an eight-year-old who has achieved nothing other than learning to go to the toilet unassisted and having stopped putting crayons up their nose? Why should we be pandering to the self-serving and self-important sentiment that exists currently?

My question is: what is left for these children? Are they to blame for their appalling behaviour or should it be their parents who are reined in? Is society to blame with its padded bras for pre-teens in Kmart, or should responsibility to be attributed to those who actually buy them? View the horror of Aniston’s birthday party here and tell us what you think of the whole debacle by commenting below.

 

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