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The Making of a Child Beauty Queen
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Film Review By Jack Nichols
HBO's light-hearted documentary, Living Dolls: The Making of a Child Beauty Queen did wonders to
discombobulate my intellectual apparatus. It seemed too easy for me, I sensed, to simply laugh it off,
even though it's a very funny movie indeed. But we all know that the other side of comedy is tragedy.
The camera follows five-year old Swan Brooner and her chain -smoking stage mom, Robin Browne, who, in breathless anticipation, lip syncs from the audience while her tiny, extraordinarily painted, bouffant-plagued daughter croons on stage at pageant after pageant. One is quickly reminded of JonBenet Ramsey as well as loony stage-moms pushing their progeny into a questionable limelight, turning baby girls' faces into extensions of conventional notions about high glamour, adult-style. Heterosexual males, who, according to H.L. Mencken, have such a weird sense of beauty that they're willing to be fooled by pretty frocks instead of thinking to look for lovely legs, offer no resistance to these culturally-approved images. Watching this film in the company of a handsome straight male I asked if he didn't feel there was something odd, at least, about Living Dolls. "No," he replied, "didn't notice anything weird at all." I got to thinking of tiny temple girls, hardly yet potty trained, weighted down with jeweled metals in Bali, perhaps, or in Myanmar, little common law brides, wedded to coordination. I thought of tribal beauty treatments such as those expanded mouths and lips or those bones through noses. In one location or another, these images have long been deemed beautiful. In Living Dolls, there's another dimension, however: two thirty-something, lip syncing, piano-playing pageant-happy males who do the little girls' hairstyles, stitch the kiddie gowns, prepare and pep up the little girls in a high pitched tiny peoples' talk and who, during pageants, jump up and down and clap their hands together in childlike glee-yelling "You go girl!" as their favorite contestants emerge on stage. These two Southern men are as involved in the stagecraft we see unfolding as is Swan's unrelenting mom.
Shane and Michael coach Swan too. They apparently live uninhibitedly through the beauty pageant business in an Alabama mansion, a huge modern home replete with a swimming pool. They love their work-it is clear-as they train little girls in the art of what I once thought was simply drag pageantry, a mindset that still lives vibrantly in the mainstream culture and which involves not male-to-female drag, but prepubescent females doing female diva drag of a variety considered beautiful in Alabama. Let Alabama, I say, lay claim to such concepts of beauty. Between pageants, Swan's mother takes her little one to Michael and Shane's palatial residence to have head shot photos taken. Her hosts hospitably offer to provide her-and Swan--a night's stay. Her child is thereby given a moment in time away from the incessant "get ready to win the next pageant" grind and she floats, perched on water wings, splashing happily while mom assures us that her own obsession that has led to this posh scene will give little Swan a taste "of the finer things" and encourage her to want them, perhaps. There are so many times that Swan, doubtless a beautiful child, looks a bit unhappy. She wants to please her mom, who, from my standpoint, seems somehow misguided. When Swan is positioned to win $2,500 dollars after having competed in countless pageants, one realizes how much she stands to win as opposed to the $70,000 her mother has thus far spent on pageants.
Besides little Swan, the other child contestants-the Living Dolls-must be seen to be believed. Even more interesting, in some instances, are their unrelenting moms. The songs, the pageantry, the odd behaviors exhibited without embarrassment are a kind of beauty culture, no doubt, that predominates in Alabama's Republican circles. The bouffant-as seen on these pageant cat walks--is the purest cultural expression of Southern Baptist femininity. And who am I, except a naturalist in matters pertaining to true beauty, to critique true make-up artistry. Nature does not always provide us with natural beauty, after all. Nature, many believe, can be improved upon. Hence the make-up industry. The coquettish little girls posing and pretending hardly realize that they are being trained to attract applause according to conventional norms. What feels like a mindblower to me, I suppose, is that the little girls' mannerisms and make-up are taught them by the two Alabama-based men. Shane and Michael are Mother Robin's best buddies, the guys she trusts in all matters. And because Shane and Michael are filled with a special zeal, a very special zeal and because they dance and prance, sing and skip and flit with the kids-I'm beginning to wonder what might become of women if such imaginative men were not often present to so creatively construct, among other things, their fondest Southern Baptist-style beauty pageant hairdo's. Something tells me they might go for something simpler. But maybe I'm dreaming. There is nothing overtly judgmental in the way Living Dolls presents childish beauty pageantry. One is left to reach one's own conclusions. Even little Swan tells her stage-mom she's looking forward to appearing in more pageants. It is difficult, therefore, to say, or at least to see, that the child may be functioning against her will. Linda Otto, Shari Cookson, Sandra Chandler and Charlton Mc Millan have taken great care to present a many-sided expose of Femininity Training ala Alabama, Ground Zero. |
Logan Carter (left) with Jack Nichols 
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