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Example of an unsuccessful couple from the Bachelor

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"The Bachelor" Jake Pavelka and his former fiance Vienna Girardi will talk about their break-up in an interview to air on ABC during "The Bachelorette" on July 5.

In March, the couple told "Good Morning America" their relationship was "amazing" and "incredible."

It's "awesome," Pavelka said.

Both said it's possible to find love on a reality show. The proof is "right here," Girardi said.

But just months later, it seems the fairytale is over. Girardi reportedly gave Pavelka back her three-carat Neil Lane diamond engagement ring, which he will return to the show's producers.

The pair joins the long list of "Bachelor" couples who have broken up. In 14 seasons, none of the "Bachelors" have married their final choice on the show.

For more on the break-up, watch Cameron Mathison's report from "GMA."

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'The Bachelor' Jake and Vienna: What Really Happened?

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"The Bachelor" Jake Pavelka and his former fiance Vienna Girardi will talk about their break-up in an interview to air on ABC during "The Bachelorette" on July 5. In March, the couple told "Good Morning America" their relationship was "amazing" and "incredible." It's "awesome," Pavelka said.

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Discusses how reality TV is becoming more trashy and less educational.

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Last month, Mike Rowe quietly let his fans know that his TV show Dirty Jobs had been canceled. On the show, Rowe showcased people proudly doing difficult, dirty and often low-paying work. TV critic Eric Deggans says it's out of fashion now for a show to look up to its subjects.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

From the story of a literary star to one of a reality TV star, Mike Rowe, host of the television show "Dirty Jobs," quietly announced last month that his show has been cancelled by the Discovery Channel. TV critic Eric Deggans says the trend in reality TV is moving away from the kind of programming Rowe brought to the screen.

ERIC DEGGANS, BYLINE: For eight seasons, Mike Rowe was the guy who dared poke things, go places and do jobs no typically blow-dried TV host would touch.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DIRTY JOBS")

MIKE ROWE: Oh, dear. This is the black, tar-like, vile, putrid, regurgitative vomit, and only produced by the ostrich, this particular bouquet.

DEGGANS: Rowe took TV cameras to the worst occupations you can imagine, inseminating turkeys, castrating lambs and digging up slimy blood worms.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DIRTY JOBS")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: See the head puffing up?

ROWE: That's down there.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: That's was the head puffing up. You don't want that to bite you.

DEGGANS: But a curious thing happened. Rowe gained serious admiration for people who tackled the ickiest jobs in America.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "DIRTY JOBS")

ROWE: You have a great respect for the blood worm, actually.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Actually, we do.

ROWE: I mean, I can just tell from listening to you. It's just...

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: It's paid for two of my houses.

ROWE: When a guy tells you that he's paid for two of his own houses by pulling slimy worms out of the mud, that gets your attention.

DEGGANS: These folks were the best at the worst jobs imaginable, but they found fulfillment in places where others fear to tread, as Rowe noted during a 2008 speech.

(SOUNDBITE OF SPEECH)

ROWE: People with dirty jobs are happier than you'd think. As a group, they're the happiest people I know. And I don't want to start whistling look for the union label and all that happy worker crap. I'm just telling you that these are balanced people who do unthinkable work. Road kill picker-uppers whistle while they work, I swear to God. I did it with them.

DEGGANS: So what's taking "Dirty Jobs'" place on Discovery?

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMISH MAFIA")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: When things don't go like they should, that's where we step in and help out.

DEGGANS: Stuff like this new series, "Amish Mafia."

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "AMISH MAFIA")

UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: The Bible says an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Yes, there really is an Amish mafia.

DEGGANS: Sounds like a bad "Saturday Night Live" skit that didn't even make the show, but they put it online the next day, anyway. But what would you expect? Discovery also owns TLC, once known as The Learning Channel. And they had a blockbuster hit with another controversial show.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HERE COMES HONEY BOO BOO")

ALANA HONEY BOO BOO THOMPSON: I am Honey Boo Boo child. I am a pageant queen superstar.

DEGGANS: "Here Come Honey Boo Boo."

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN #2: You're a little fat.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HERE COMES HONEY BOO BOO")

JUNE SHANNON: We're a little fat. We're fat.

MIKE THOMPSON: We're not fat. We're pleasingly plump.

DEGGANS: This show oozes disdain for its characters.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "HERE COMES HONEY BOO BOO")

THOMPSON: I want the barbeque. Now, I want the chicken and then I want the ribs.

DEGGANS: The show subtitles their every word, like the family's thick Southern accents are from another language. And its attitude has spread across a chunk of so-called reality TV shows. Let's call it the Honey Boo Boo-ification of nonfiction television. Out goes a show that honors hard work and solid values, and in comes programs which play like televised freak shows.

On "Dirty Jobs," Mike Rowe encouraged the audience to admire working-class heroes doing jobs no one else would. "Honey Boo Boo" invites its audience to look down on its starts. It makes them the butt of an inside joke every viewer's encouraged to laugh at. Sad as it is to see "Dirty Jobs" ushered off to cancellation, Mike Rowe and his crew might be getting out just in time.

MONTAGNE: Eric Deggans: He's a TV and media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, and also author of "Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation."

Copyright © 2012 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

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Reality TV Has Become Honey Boo Boo-ified

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Last month, Mike Rowe quietly let his fans know that his TV show Dirty Jobs had been canceled. On the show, Rowe showcased people proudly doing difficult, dirty and often low-paying work. TV critic Eric Deggans says it's out of fashion now for a show to look up to its subjects.

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Discusses the bad behavior of the women on Real Housewives.

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So it is a credit to the casting scouts of Bravo that they managed to sign up a crew of women every bit as uninhibited and ostentatious as their predecessors. As is now almost de rigueur, at least one marriage won't last. This sextet includes Camille Grammer, who begins the season as the wife of the "Frasier" star Kelsey Grammer and ends it headed for divorce. She has two children and four nannies.

There is a pair of sisters, the child actresses Kim Richards and Kyle Richards, who both had roles in the 1975 Disney movie "Escape to Witch Mountain." They have reality television in their blood; their half sister is Kathy Hilton, mother of Paris and Nicky.

The British-born housewife Lisa Vanderpump has a husband, many tiny dogs, several restaurants and Cedric, a live-in trainer-houseguest. Adrienne Maloof is married to a plastic surgeon but helps run the Maloof family business, which includes the Sacramento Kings, the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas and the Maloof Money Cup skateboard competition.

Taylor Armstrong is married to an investment banker and is the most vocally and visibly insecure housewife in the group. She allows the cameras in as a plastic surgeon (Adrienne's husband, Dr. Paul Nassif) shoots filler into her temples, which then swell into puffy lumps. Taylor should have known better: her looks are arresting, but her plumped lips are alarming, not bee-stung so much as stingray-stung.

"My husband is masculine; there is no blurring that issue," she tells the camera. "Oh, Lord, he's going to leave me for a 20-year-old."

It is unlikely that any of these women will make headlines by gate-crashing. The Academy Awards must have tighter security than the White House. It doesn't matter. Beverly Hills is the nominal setting, but the real milieu is Bravo.
THE REAL HOUSEWIVES of Beverly Hills Bravo, Thursday nights at 10, Eastern and Pacific times; 9, Central time.
Produced for Bravo by Evolution Media. Douglas Ross, Greg Stewart, Kathleen French, Dave Rupel and Alex Baskin, executive producers; Toni Gallagher, co-executive producer.

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real housewives of beverly hills  the (tv program)

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So it is a credit to the casting scouts of Bravo that they managed to sign up a crew of women every bit as uninhibited and ostentatious as their predecessors. As is now almost de rigueur, at least one marriage won't last.

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Examples of Bachelor in Paradise couples who are still together.

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Ah, "Paradise."

The Bachelor Nation spinoff is often derided as the trashier cousin of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette," where castoff contestants from those shows are deposited at a Mexican resort, sans air-conditioning, to find love (a.k.a. get drunk, make out with one another and construct messy love triangles).

"Bachelor in Paradise" is not without scandal: Last year, production briefly halted after Warner Bros., which produces the show, investigated whether a contestant was "too drunk to consent" to sexual activity with another contestant. (The show announced there had been no misconduct and filming resumed, with new restrictions on how much contestants could drink and how consent must be established on-camera.)

However, a more wholesome conclusion from "Paradise" is that the show is on its way to a better success rate than the franchise's other shows. "The Bachelor," which wrapped its 22nd season in March, typically ends in engagements, although the couples tend to break up quickly. "The Bachelorette," which wrapped its 14th season this month, has a 50-50 success rate for the final couples.

But "Paradise" is on track to yield roughly one lasting couple per season. At least four couples who met on the show are still together, and this season, the show's fifth, could bring more engagements.

We're guessing it has a lot to do with the fact that there's more than one man or woman to pine over - and the season ends with several couples, many of which don't last. With about 20 single men and women deposited on a resort in Sayulita, Mexico, connections can form and break off and re-form elsewhere. And you never know who will show up, midseason, to throw a curveball into the mix.

Here's a rundown of the couples who met under the sun in Sayulita and are still Instagram-official.
Jade and Tanner Tolbert
Jade and Tanner met on season two of "Paradise" and got engaged by the end of the season. "I think Tanner and Jade are going to make it. That's not sarcasm. I'm serious," Vulture recapper Ali Barthwell wrote at the time. And indeed, they have. In 2016, they were married in a televised wedding extravaganza commemorating 20 years of the Bachelor franchise, and many Bachelor franchise alums were in attendance. In August 2017, the couple welcomed a daughter, Emerson Avery Tolbert.
Carly Waddell and Evan Bass
Initially, Carly did not seem to like Evan all that much. They went on a date in Season 3 that included a "habanero kiss," meaning they were challenged to eat a habanero pepper and then kiss for 90 seconds. They made it a minute and 41 seconds, which might be a world record. But the lip-lock also resulted in Carly throwing up as soon as it was over. If you kiss a man and then have this bodily reaction, I'm guessing he's not the father of your future children, and at first, Carly concurred. She dumped him.

But, hey! This is Paradise. Anything can happen. And does happen. Later in the season, Evan faked an illness and Carly accompanied him to the hospital. This, apparently, is when the real sparks flew, and they started to form a relationship. By the end of the season, they were engaged. And during the premiere of Season 4, they also got married on television. In February of this year, they welcomed a daughter, Isabella Evelyn, to whom I hope they're not feeding habanero peppers.
Raven Gates and Adam Gottschalk
The beginning of this match was a bit messy. Raven started out Season 4 on a date with someone else: Robby from JoJo Fletcher's "Bachelorette" season. But by episode three, she and Adam went on a date and hit it off. But not so fast! The pairing-off is never as easy as it might seem in Paradise. On episode four, Sarah Vendal from Nick Viall's season showed up and took Adam on a date. A few episodes later, Adam wormed his way out of this love triangle by giving a rose to Raven - and from then on they seemed solid. They left Paradise not engaged but "as a couple," which is the less-serious and perhaps more sane option. A year later, they're still together.
Ashley Iaconetti and Jared Haibon
These two had a long and winding road to engagement. When they first appeared on Season 2 of "Paradise" together, Ashley says it was "love at first sight," while Jared couldn't see himself with someone as emotional as Ashley. "It was a slow build for me," Jared says of their relationship in a video telling the story of how they got together. Jared dumped Ashley twice that season, after which they slowly became friends.

In 2016, they both returned for Season 3 of "Paradise" - but Ashley arrived midseason and by this point Jared was already dating Caila Quinn. Jared told Ashley to date other people; she cried and fantasized about how they weren't actually over. "This is what romance novels are made of: Girl likes guy who doesn't like her. And then comes running back when the other object of his affection goes elsewhere," she said. Despite Ashley's determination, her friends kept telling her she needed to move on and "get a grip on reality," Ashley recalls.

In late 2017, Ashley went on another spinoff - "The Bachelor Winter Games" - and started dating Kevin Wendt. When they left the show, they were in a relationship. However, in January 2018, Ashley, Jared and a handful of other "Bachelor" alums (including Jade and Tanner!) went on vacation to St. Lucia, and Jared finally confessed his feelings for Ashley and kissed her. She decided to keep dating Kevin, but once that relationship ended, she and Jared got together. They got engaged in Mexico this summer, and ABC has been airing teasers that the proposal will air during this season of "Paradise."

On Solo-ish this May, "Bachelor" viewer and relationship writer Jenna Birch noted that "of all the couples ever to emerge from the Bachelor franchise, Jared and Ashley feel perhaps the most real - precisely because it took them three years of confusion, indecision and doubt to get to where they are today."
READ MORE: 'The Bachelorette' addressed Garrett's Instagram controversy - but left out a crucial detail Why it took 3 years for this 'Bachelor' couple, Ashley I and Jared, to finally get together Rachel Lindsay isn't happy with her 'Bachelorette' finale compared with Becca Kufrin's. She has a point.

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Analysis | 'Bachelor in Paradise' is often derided as 'The Bachelor's' trashy cousin. But its couples seem to stick.

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Ah, "Paradise." The Bachelor Nation spinoff is often derided as the trashier cousin of "The Bachelor" and "The Bachelorette," where castoff contestants from those shows are deposited at a Mexican resort, sans air-conditioning, to find love (a.k.a. get drunk, make out with one another and construct messy love triangles).

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Discusses how reality TV helps people better themselves

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Commentary about how the finale of the Hills basically showed it was fake.

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'The Hills' series finale: The joke's on us, apparently

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If you've been watching the final season of The Hills, you know that last night's series finale came down to...

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Study that found that people who watched reality TV beauty shows were more likely to fake tan, which is known to cause cancer.

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(Reuters) - College students who watch reality television beauty shows are at least twice as likely as non-viewers to use tanning lamps or tan outdoors for hours at a time, according to a U.S. study.

The findings, which appeared in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, doesn't prove that simply watching shows such as America's Next Top Model and Toddlers & Tiaras drives people to the tanning booths, researchers said.

But it does suggest the shows aren't promoting the healthiest views on tanning, which has been linked to a higher risk of skin cancer - especially among young people.

"TV shows might not realize the message they're (promoting) by having all of these attractive, tanned people," said study co-author Joshua Fogel, a health policy researcher at Brooklyn College, part of the City University of New York system.

For both skin specialists and primary care doctors, he added, "it's worth asking their younger patients if they do use tanning lamps and outdoor tanning ... especially those that watch reality TV shows."

The findings were based on surveys of 576 college students who were in their early 20s, on average. About 61 percent of them watched reality TV beauty shows.

Watching reality TV was tied to both indoor and outdoor tanning. Among people who watched the beauty shows, 13 percent had used tanning lamps in the last year and 43 percent had tanned outdoors for more than two hours at a time.

In comparison, fewer than four percent of non-watchers used tanning lamps and 29 percent tanned outdoors.

Not surprisingly, women were ten times more likely to use tanning lamps than men.

The researchers didn't ask survey participants exactly what shows they watched, so they couldn't tie specific programs to tanning.

"It's very clear that people who are watching (these shows) view this as something positive to do," Fogel told Reuters Health, adding that it's possible the programs may directly encourage viewers to tan because they imply tanned people are cooler and more attractive.

"The alternative possibility is the people who are tanned in the first place like watching these shows," he added, perhaps because the characters look more like them.

Another study, in The Journal of Pediatrics, found that reality TV viewing was tied to better self esteem among adolescent girls. But the girls who watched the shows also focused more on their appearance.

A representative from TLC-Discovery Communications, which airs Toddlers & Tiaras, said the network had no comment on Fogel's findings.

Dermatologist Elizabeth Tanzi, who wasn't involved in the study, said the results were consistent with what doctors in the field know about the media's influence.

"The images on TV of celebrities, they really do send powerful messages to the masses," said Tanzi, from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore and the Washington Institute of Dermatologic Laser Surgery.

"And if they are going to the tanning salons and giving the impression that to be beautiful you have to be tan, and that's the ideal, that message is a very powerful one that's going to our young people." SOURCE: bit.ly/XMT6Q5

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Reality TV beauty show viewers more likely to tan: study

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(Reuters) - College students who watch reality television beauty shows are at least twice as likely as non-viewers to use tanning lamps or tan outdoors for hours at a time, according to a U.S. study.

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Discusses positive aspects of reality TV

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Shows like "Love & Hip Hop" offer nuanced portrayals of women of color. They're not a guilty pleasure.

By Racquel Gates

Dr. Gates specializes in African-American media, particularly representations of race in popular film and television.

Image

Credit Credit Laci Jordan

Why do people call reality television a guilty pleasure? Why do so many reject the possibility that the trashiest of shows, like VH1's "Love & Hip Hop," might have a lot to tell us about society, women and power? Shows like this aren't fluff - they're subversive, self-aware and capable of depicting the complexities of women of color in nuanced ways.

Many critics claim that the appeal of reality TV is schadenfreude. Others say it regurgitates tired stereotypes that "quality" programming left behind long ago. I'm a scholar of media studies, and to me, the appeal of reality TV is something more intriguing and radical. It's that the women on these shows reject social norms about "respectable" femininity. And they are unapologetic about it.

"Love & Hip Hop," which will start its ninth season in November, follows the personal and professional lives of the women, and sometimes men, connected to the hip-hop music industry. It's often referred to as an example of a "ratchet" reality show, meaning that it is trashy and low quality. "Love & Hip Hop" has received a lot of criticism (along with other VH1 reality shows like "Basketball Wives" and "Black Ink Crew") because of the over-the-top behavior of some of its cast members and its sensational story lines, aspects of the show that, for many people, slip into damaging clichés.

Take a recent episode of "Love & Hip Hop Hollywood." Brooke Valentine, a cast member, tells her girlfriends that she found an engagement ring in the possession of her on-again-off-again boyfriend. So what did she do? She promptly slipped it on her finger and declared herself engaged. To Ms. Valentine, it was immaterial whether or not her boyfriend agreed.

On the one hand, Ms. Valentine's "engagement on a technicality" may seem to play into a troubling representation of a black woman: someone who schemes and connives to achieve her romantic goal, rather than follow the ladylike conventions for how engagements and marriages are supposed to happen.

Yet on the other hand, her willful claiming of the engagement ring and of the title "fiancée" upends the traditional marriage proposal, in which women are the objects of a life-changing decision and never the agents. Ms. Valentine's attitude and behavior may appear "ratchet" because of how it bucks convention. But her actions should also remind us that such traditions were not conceived with women of color in mind, anyway.

This is not to say that reality television is beyond reproach. As a genre, it flourishes in large part because of unfair labor practices. The cast and crew on these shows don't always receive fair wages. And although the shows are ostensibly unscripted, they're often heavily produced.

Some might cite this as yet another example of why television, and society, would be better off without the genre. Yet reality TV gives us an unfiltered window onto the capitalist and ideological structures that make up all media. And so, rather than see it as a failure that women like Ms. Valentine refuse to adhere to conventional scripts, I believe that we should read it as a form of resistance.

It is easy to lament society's fall from civility when Tommie Lee, on "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta," screams and hurls epithets at her mother during a particularly vicious argument. Yet at the same time, Ms. Lee's hurt, the feeling of a lifetime of emotional and physical abandonment by the woman responsible for her care, resonates with viewers who may share her complicated filial emotions, even if they do not identify with her conduct.

In a scripted drama, this scenario would most likely build to a happy resolution and the family would reunite. But in the world of "Love & Hip Hop," the angst, the hurt, the betrayal - feelings that women of color are not often allowed to express - make up the backbone of the season. These "ratchet" reality shows offer a kind of empathy most often found in soap operas and melodrama, the two genres that "Love & Hip Hop" most closely resembles.

What's more, "Love & Hip Hop" has always included queer characters of different races, ethnicities and class backgrounds. And while the show occasionally falls into tired clichés, particularly with queer men of color, I would offer that this is partly a result of the number of queer characters and story lines on the show.

So let's stop criticizing the shows and instead engage more thoughtfully with their stylistic and narrative elements. If we did, we'd find women eschewing traditional definitions of what it means to be a wife or a mother. We'd see queer people casting aside conventional modes of gender. We'd recognize men suffering under the burden of patriarchy. And we'd know that all of them are constantly walking a fine line between being self-aware and having agency, and being obligated to perform for the networks that employ them.

"Ratchet" reality TV shows are already in the metaphorical gutter. Yet this may be a blessing rather than a curse, as they are unburdened by the limitations of being "positive" representations. And that is the power of these shows, their ability to help us explore what it means to navigate life as people of color in all of its fraught, messy and yes, sometimes ratchet realities.

Racquel Gates, an assistant professor of media studies at The College of Staten Island, is the author of " Double Negative: The Black Image and Popular Culture. "

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page SR6 of the New York edition with the headline: Reality TV Isn't a Guilty Pleasure. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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Shows like "Love & Hip Hop" offer nuanced portrayals of women of color. They're not a guilty pleasure. By Racquel Gates Dr. Gates specializes in African-American media, particularly representations of race in popular film and television. Why do people call reality television a guilty pleasure?

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Discusses the harmful effects of beauty pageants, which would tie to Toddlers and Tiaras example.

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Some lawmakers in France say child pageants over-sexualize children

Pageant watchers in the USA say outlawing the contests wouldn%27t fully address concerns

Cable TV%27s %22Toddlers and Tiaras%22 has put the spotlight on %22high-glitz%22 pageants

The world of beauty queens and pageants was in the hot seat last week, and not just because of the racist online comments hurled at Nina Davuluri after she became the first woman of Indian descent to be named Miss America.

In France, legislators moved to ban child beauty pageants on the grounds that they promote the "hyper-sexualization" of minors. A measure even proposes jail time and a fine for violators - including parents and organizers - who sponsor or encourage "access to these competitions" for anyone under age 16, the Associated Press reported.

The French Senate approved the bill, but it must be passed by a lower house of parliament before becoming law.

According to The Guardian, the attention to the "Mini-Miss" beauty pageants was prompted by debates over a 2010 photo spread in French Vogue featuring a 10-year-old girl in heavy makeup, high-heeled shoes and tight clothes and pouting provocatively.

Such a ban wouldn't fly in the USA, says sociologist Hilary Levey Friedman, a research associate at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of the new book Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture.

"Historically and legally, our system defers to parents to make the right decision for their child," she says. "We see the family as more of a private entity."

Karen Kataline, a mental health professional near Denver who participated in child pageants in the 1960s, says she understands the motivation to ban the competitions, but doesn't think that's the answer. The problem "is not just the pageants, it's the parents" who support and encourage the sexualization of their children, says Kataline, author of the memoir FATLASH! Food Police & the Fear of Thin - A Cautionary Tale.

"I'm not against children singing and dancing on stage, but you want them to sing and dance and perform in age-appropriate ways," she says. "Today, we've pushed the envelope to ridiculous degrees."

The proposed penalties of up to two years in prison and $40,000 in fines "seem a bit extreme" but the concerns are certainly legitimate, says Martina Cartwright, an adjunct faculty member at the University of Arizona. Her research on child pageants was published last year in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

A task force of the American Psychological Association noted that "girls who are sexualized early will tend to gather their self-worth as an adult based on their appearance," says Cartwright. And there's also the issue of certain adults who "make the assumption that the girls have the ability to make adult decisions just based on the way they look rather than their actual age."

She doubts, however, that a ban will adequately address the issue of girls and women "being judged solely on appearance, and the idea that self-worth is only based on how they look."

As seen on the hit TLC reality show Toddlers & Tiaras, and its spin-off, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, child beauty pageants put a premium on appearance. And in the case of so-called "high-glitz" pageants it's an appearance that requires girls to dress up and perform like pint-size adults, complete with fake hair, spray tans, full makeup, ornate costumes and even artificial teeth (known as flippers).

Glitz pageants are a multibillion-dollar business now, having exploded since Toddlers & Tiaras came on in 2009, says Cartwright, a registered dietitian who started researching pageants as a result of her work with young performers and athletes.

The average total cost of participating in a single competition, according to Cartwright's research: $3,000 to $5,000.

That research included attending live tapings of the reality show and traveling to other child pageants, where participation typically drops off between ages 7 and 9. Tears and temper tantrums were common, she says, with many parents denying young children naps or breaks during grueling pageant schedules for fear that sleeping might mess up the child's hair or makeup.

Cartwright also recounts parents giving their kids caffeinated beverages and Pixy Stix candy, often referred to as "pageant crack," to keep their energy levels high.

The addition of television cameras and the desire to be noticed at the competitions only heightens some parents' and contestants' over-the top behavior, says Friedman, who has studied pageants for more than a decade.

"I've seen terrible behavior on the part of people associated with child beauty pageants, but it's (increased) when a TV crew is there," Friedman says. Often the adults are "looking for 15 minutes of fame" for themselves and the child, she says.

Cartwright has labeled this drive by parents for social or financial gains earned by the child's accomplishments - regardless of the risk involved for the child - "princess by proxy."

Honey Boo Boo star Alana Thompson, 8, symbolizes the potential benefit. A reported 3.2 million viewers (a record for the show) watched the season finale on Sept. 11, and more episodes have been ordered. Thompson recently inspired a line of merchandise, including posters, apparel and accessories.

Toddlers & Tiaras alum Isabella Barrett, 7, is a reported millionaire with her own fashion line and TV show in Germany. Another breakout "star" from the show, Eden Wood, 8, had her own short-lived reality show ( Eden's World) and was the subject of the recent tell-all book, Unleashing a Momster: A Peek Behind the Curtain at the Tragic Life of America's Most Successful Child Pageant Star, written by her former manager.

The often sassy, over-the-top personalities that make for eye-catching TV have influenced local pageants, says Cartwright. "Parents think that's how their child should behave in order to win. What they see on TV is what they want to create in their own reality."

Although child beauty pageants have been around since 1880, the last time they were the focus of such attention was following the death in 1996 of JonBenet Ramsey, a 6-year-old beauty pageant veteran, says Friedman.

Back then, the world of kid pageants was still very much "a subculture limited to geographic pockets," she says. In today's wired world, however, anyone anywhere in the country inspired by watching the TV shows can get on the Internet and find out where to buy the best dress and accessories, get coaching on Skype and find a competition.

Fans of pageants point to the poise, presence and confidence that participants (both girls and boys) gain, as well as the parent-child bonding, says Cartwright. For those who enjoy the dress-up factor for their daughters but in a less overdone setting, many turn to so-called "natural" pageants that restrict "the glitz, makeup and risqué dresses," she says.

Anna Berry of Littleton, Colo., cites numerous benefits for her daughter Ashley, 14, who was once "so shy she wouldn't order food for herself at a restaurant." Since getting involved with "natural" pageants four years ago, she has developed "self-confidence, self-esteem, come out of her shell, and made great new friendships," says Berry.

Many pageants also highlight academic performance and volunteer service, so Ashley's achievements in those areas, especially her work as an anti-bullying advocate, have also been encouraged, Berry says.

The potential for scholarship money is another plus, says Stephanie Warren, a self-described "pageant girl-turned-pageant director-turned pageant mom" in La Grange, Ky. Her daughter, Alexis, 7, has already earned $2,500 toward her college education via natural pageant competitions.

Alexis does not compete in any of the events sponsored by her mom's America's Natural Supreme Beauties, which Warren developed as "an affordable, natural, national pageant system ... that strives to make each and every one of our contestants feel like family."

Letting girls compete in a well-run pageant is no different from "letting them do a sport like cheerleading, dance or gymnastics," she says. "If you're going to ban this are you going to ban that? I think pageants get picked on in a way."

Child pageants, like all competitive child activities, would benefit from clear guidelines and regulations, says Friedman.

Making sure that pageant operators are legitimate businesses will help reduce "the scam aspect" that parents often complain about when putting out large sums of money for their child to participate, she says.

Regulations should also address issues of health and safety, she says: "I've been to pageants where there's an outbreak of pinkeye because the same products were used on all the kids."

And parents need to think about and educate themselves about the influence these competitions have not only on the participants, but the kids who watch them on TV, says Cartwright.

"TV images have a huge impact on little girls and the type of messages they internalize about what is normal, how they should look and how they should behave."

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Could child beauty pageants be banned in the USA?

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Proposed legislation in France would ban child beauty pageants. Could the USA?