In most respects, the Parents Television Council is a media watchdog in the same sense that a Pomeranian is an actual watchdog, which is to say that it yaps incessantly over the most minor of disturbances and tends to act out whenever it doesn’t receive enough attention. Really, it would take something like, I don’t know, a small child parading around in a hooker costume to justify PTC’s consistent level of moral outrage—which, fair enough, the PTC is justified for being upset with TLC’s Toddlers & Tiaras for featuring a small child parading around in a hooker costume. “We have a serious problem when The Learning Channel features a toddler, who probably hasn’t even learned to read, dressed as a prostitute showing off her sexy strut,” PTC communications director Melissa Henson said in the organization’s first non-hyperbolic statement in ages, probably since the days TLC was still calling itself “The Learning Channel.”


This time the PTC’s ire was specifically directed at tonight’s episode (a clip from which you can see below) in which a 3-year-old dressed as Julia Roberts’ character from Pretty Woman, the classic Disney fairytale about how if a little girl works really hard at prostituting, eventually she’ll find her Prince Charming. As the girl’s mother, Wendy Dickey, explained to Entertainment Weekly, “At this pageant there was an option to do celebrity-wear, and we thought about what we could wear with her being a brunette, and Julia Roberts is my favorite actress of all time.” So in a way, this was all totally unavoidable, given that celebrity-wear was an option and Julia Roberts simply has no other iconic costumes to choose from. Did you want Wendy Dickey to dress her 3-year-old daughter up as Erin Brockovich? Because guess what, we would still be having this conversation.

Nevertheless, the PTC believes that this scene is an example of “adult sexuality being inappropriately and aggressively foisted on innocent young children,” which suggests that this is their very first episode of Toddlers & Tiaras. The good news is there are four whole seasons of Toddlers & Tiaras to catch up on, Parents Television Council, enough fodder to keep you busy for several months.