“Girls have got to be more forward and act older than they are. That’s just the way it is.”

Fake nails, fake tans, bikinis, piercings, hair extensions for grade-schoolers? “Any good mum would do the same.”

I’ve been glancing at this story on and off for a couple of hours, trying to figure out whether I’m more saddened or angry about young British beauty pageant contestant Sasha Bennington.

“Mummy’s little Lolita: The 11-year-old girl whose beauty treatments cost £300 a month to make her look like Barbie.”

[T]he pageant veteran charged with showing Sasha the ropes demonstrates how to walk like a beauty queen.

She explains how to turn your body round while holding the judges’ eyes, before flipping your head round at the last minute ‘like that Exorcist child’.

Ignore the Mail’s sneering assertion that a children’s beauty pageant held at a “down-market-looking Texan hotel” epitomises the (crass, cultureless) “American Dream.” And shake your head at mother Jayne’s cluelessness about — or indifference to — the fact that reporter Jenny Johnson was not writing a fawning puff piece but a massive Gotcha! article. Just absorb Mum’s attitude.

Part 1:

It was about the same time she started dabbling in beauty pageants that Jayne declared she wanted her daughter to be the next Jordan. She still does.

‘Of course. Jordan is her idol and I fully support her in that. She’s a great role model, this really down-to-earth woman who has made a big success of her life.’

Part 2:

Jayne takes Sasha to a major agency, in the hope that she will be signed up.

The model booker says a vehement ‘no’, horrified by her portfolio, and tells Jayne that clients want their child models to look like children, and that for this sort of career success she would have to stop bleaching Sasha’s hair and encouraging her to wear plastic nails. Jayne refuses to comply.

The portfolio photos include one of Sasha mimicking Mena Suvari’s American Beauty pose.

It comes as no surprise that Jayne used to be a model herself, and one who worked in the ‘glamour’ side of the business.

Just a reminder:

1. In Britain, “glamour model” = Get yer t*ts out.

2. Jordan.

Ask Sasha how she sees herself and she replies: ‘Blonde, pretty, dumb - I don’t need brains.’ Her mum laughs her head off at this, proud that the child is so like her.

Forget what I said at the start of this post. I know exactly how I feel.

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