The Other Glass Teat

by Harlan Ellison

  And I called KTTV and asked them if they’d screen me a tape of the live telecast of the pageant, and they said yes, and so it was that last Monday I went down to the KTTV studios and sat for ninety minutes as the Universal Broadcasting Company (of Baton Rouge, Louisiana) piped a replay through its Dallas affiliate to a color tv at Channel 11. Ninety minutes of unrelenting bad taste, petty hokum, deadly degradation of innocent children. Ninety teeth-clenching, stomach-bubbling minutes of ghastliness as a clique of dirty old men and their exploiting associates debased and corrupted a dozen little girls between the ages of three and twelve.

  Thereby keynoting, most appropriately for this edition dedicated to the ennoblement of the female image, one of the most insidious maneuvers utilized by our snake-twisted society to fuck up the minds of its female population.

  Uh, Hef, that’s about 50 percent of the crowd. Which, in case you hadn’t noticed, makes the Catholic Church look like really inept small potatoes.

  The “Our Little Miss” Pageant (we are told by a publicity release) is more than a beauty pageant! It is a youth development program designed to give young ladies early goals in good grooming, social graces, talent training, and scholarship! It is the only outlet of this kind for deserving youngsters!

  The brochure goes on to tell us that OLM (as I’ll refer to it hereafter) has 1200 local preliminaries sponsored by civic and service organizations throughout the nation (as opposed to a mere 54 local pageants for Miss Teenage America). Are you hanging in there?

  There are over 100,000 local contestants (second only to the Miss America Pageant, whoop whoop!). There are 32 state pageants. And in 1969 there were 177 international contestants. And there is even a motto: THERE IS NOTHING SWEETER THAN A LITTLE GIRL!

  That all of this bullshit serves the major purpose of hyping children’s clothes and toys and (god save us) cosmetics, is something that seems to escape the attention of all save the venal swine who cobble up this monstrosity from, well, from whole cloth. (“The La Petite winner will appear on one million Martha’s Miniature Dress hangtags during 1970.”)

  But, why linger any longer on the background? Why not come with me now to the Great Hall of the Dallas Apparel Mart (“The fact that the Pageant is emanating from the Dallas Apparel Mart gives it a fashion connotation…a world-wide glimpse into the children’s sphere of fashion.”) for the 1970 World’s “Our Little Miss” Variety Pageant.

  There’s no business like snow business…!

  Frankie Avalon and Shari Lewis were the guest stars, and the show opened with Frankie singing (naturally) “Thank Heaven for Little Girls,” a song which has abominable lyrics and is difficult to sing by anyone but Maurice Chevalier, and even he looks a trifle embarrassed. As for Frankie, I’ve known him slightly better than casually for many years, and while he is a lovely guy and I don’t want he should take offense, he still only has one note in his repertoire. It was not an auspicious opening. Followed by Shari Lewis and her sex-crazed hand-puppet, Lambchop.

  Announcer: “Live! From the Great Hall in Dallas, Texas [home of hyperthyroid provincialism], the 1970 World’s ‘Our Little Miss’ Variety Pageant…hosts Frankie Avalon and Shari Lewis…featuring 250 of the cutest, most talented little girls in the world! Brought to us by Royalty Toys!” And they run a commercial for this blatant tie-in, the “Our Little Miss Toy Doll,” a strangely grotesque little blank-eyed mannequin wearing a princess tiara and a cape with a train.

  Commercial over, the announcer informs us there are two divisions: 7–12 years old, the Our Little Miss finalists; ages 3–6, the La Petite finalists. They will compete in sportwear, party dresses, and talent.

  Frankie and Shari came down, then, to be introduced, and they virtually had to sprint the 146 miles across the polo-field-sized stage to the cameras. And oddly, there was no audience. Just a bleacher section set up with hundreds of little girls ranked one after the other.

  They were introduced by two superannuated elves named Bob Something and Chuck Something, who sat in a kind of sportscasters’ box and spouted treacly aphorisms at one another: “Isn’t this a marvelous pageant, Chuck?” Chuck bobbled his head like a puppet minus its puppet master. “Well, it certainly is, Bob!” “And aren’t these little girls just marvelous, Chuck?” “They really are fantastic, Bob!” It went on that way for minutes, entire minutes.

  Then came someone named Mr. Lynn, a gentleman of questionable demeanor (I’m avoiding lawsuits in my phraseology, friends), who is variously referred to in the publicity brochure as “the ‘Bert Parks’ of the OLM pageant,” “nationally famous personality,” Charming of the Children’s Pageant World,” “In the words of Mister Lynn, the international master of ceremonies, ‘When Little Miss hits national television it will steal the hearts of all America,’” “a kaleidoscope personality,” and in an advertisement he obviously took for himself in the brochure (check the spelling of this international personality), “One of America’s foremost authorities of femenine [sic] beauty.”

  Mister Lynn, who looked to my jaundiced eye like the sort of failed hairdresser who lures little children into the basements of churches with M & Ms, simpered his way through a saccharine introduction in praise of Shari and Frankie. At this point I called for a shot of insulin. One could get diabetes just watching this abomination.

  But this was all preamble to the very genuine horrors about to be unveiled. In party dresses, out came the six finalists in the OLM division. They marched out as a cadre and all stood there with right foot extended and twisted in that improbable model’s stance seen ad nauseam at fashion shows and being held by women at parties, the kind of women who feel uncomfortable at parties. And art gallery openings. All six had ghastly Miss America smiles on their little faces. That wholly unearthly rictus that denotes neither joy nor warmth. All teeth and cheeks stretched back like papyrus; smiles as if painted on, or as though Mister Lynn and his fashion thugs had held by the head each of the children just prior to emergence onstage, and attached clothespins at the back of the neck, under the hairline, to stretch the faces into that monstrous sardonicus. I had visions of the ballet The Red Shoes, of the ballerina dancing till she danced all time away and finally died. I had a vision of these unfortunate little moppets smiling like that through all the days of their lives, till they were put in the final box, smile still strictured.

  Then they brought out the half-dozen La Petite division children. Ages three to six. Tiny. My god, small. Innocent. And…oh, Jesus Jesus…they had blue eyeliner and lipstick and that awful model’s pose…three to six years old…Oh, Christ! They look twenty-five!

  How can they do it? How can they turn kids under six into jaded strumpets of twenty-five? Mother of god, they all look like hookers!

  It’s been years since I’ve felt the need to cry.

  My lady, Cindy, watching the pageant with me, said in a stunned voice, “The producers of this thing must be ex-convicts who’ve served time for child molestation!”

  On it went, without respite. The 1969 OLM winner, Miss Lauri Lynn Huffaker of Dallas, Texas, came on with “the world famous Riley dance troupe” (?) and did a cheap-jack production number cavorting to “March of the Wooden Soldiers.” Meaning no disrespect, but for a big-time national winner of a big-time national talent pageant like this, Miss Huffaker struck me as a rather ungainly little girl with no visible talent.

  Into another commercial, surfeited with sloppy sweet sentimentality about little girls, pushing that goddamn OLM doll that “comes complete with crown, robes, and beautiful clothes.” It bulks obvious: beautiful clothes are one of the cornerstones of this entire vomitous operation. Not only is it bad enough to portray little girls as vapid creatures fit only to sit around and play momma to their dolls—an image our society reinforces from cradle to dishpan, thereby assuring itself of generation after generation of unpaid, highly skilled day-care and kitchen help—but in preparing these prepubescent Lolitas to be good consumers, devourers of the Grossest National Product, in preparing them to be mi
ndless automatons who will buy every midi-length superfluosity economists and Women’s Wear Daily feel are necessities to save a sagging economy, they are infected by cynical and demented hypes like the OLM pageant with the virus of believing if one does not have good grooming and the latest clothes, one simply is out of it, unfit not merely to be Our Little Miss, but disallowed from having any feelings of ego strength, any intrinsic worth, any right to the bounties of life. It is, quite literally, the corruption of the young.

  And for all his lisping sentimentality about the wonders of little girls, they held the camera just a few beats too long on the Prince Charming of the Children’s Pageant World and Mister Lynn, with a monstrously sinister smile carved on his face, exposed his inner nature with one look. It was like looking out of the mad eyes of Vincent van Gogh at The Starry Night. It was one of those inexplicable, unpredicted moments when one sees straight to the core of another human being, and in that glance was all the cynical exploitive rapacity of a man in no way above using children to further his own sick needs. The man caught unaware in that camera glare was not a man I would leave to baby-sit with my children.

  Frankie was cut in quickly on camera, sitting with the La Petite finalists, reading from some loathsome Edgar Guestian rodomontade about “What Is a Little Girl?” I reproduce just a snippet here. More would be to dare safety:

  “God borrows from many creatures to make a little girl: he uses the song of the bird, the squeal of the pig, the stubbornness of a mule, the antics of a monkey, the spryness of a grasshopper, the curiosity of a cat…. The little girl likes: new shoes and party dresses, small animals, first grade, noisemakers, the girl next door, dolls, make believe, dancing lessons, ice cream, kitchens, coloring books, make-up…”

  It went on for some time, painting a pastel picture of prewomanhood consigned to its place: in the boutiques and the kitchen. The little girls sat there and arranged their skirts about them, ensuring the exquisiteness of their appearance every moment, all of them terribly involved with themselves, already poisoned by their parents into thinking superficial attractiveness, the right image, the way they look to the rest of the world…are the only matters of consequence a properly brought-up young lady should worry about.

  Then the OLM finalists came out, one by one, in their sports clothes and Mister Lynn quavered minute descriptions of their ensembles. The children pirouetted and did that models’ slouch, and when they finally stood all in a row, it was terribly sad-making to realize that, for all but one of them, from this moment on, everything in their lives would be downhill. In the bleachers, the little girls who had already been weeded out clapped on cue. They all wore little white gloves, and when they applauded it looked like a pigeon freakout in a dirndl shoppe.

  Commercial: “Little child, with your eyes shining and dimpled cheeks, you will lead us along the pathway to the more abundant life. We blundering grown-ups need in our lives the virtue that you have in yours. The joys and enthusiasm of looking forward to a routine day, with glorious expectation of wonderful things to come. The vision that sees the world as a splendid place

  …Challenge that forgets differences as quickly as your childish quarrels are done, and holds no grudges, that hates pretense and empty show. That loves people for what they are; the genuineness of being oneself; to be simple, natural, and sincere. Oh, little child, may we become more like you. And now, from Royalty Toys, the Little Miss Doll: the doll that epitomizes the beautiful, talented, and poised little girls of the world. Little girls: curious, inventive, playing pageant with their Little Miss Dolls. Little girls who, in these times of stark reality, can escape into a world of gumdrops and lollipops. There is nothing sweeter than a little girl, and no finer playmate than a Little Miss Doll. The Little Miss Doll, coming soon to leading toy and department stores. By Royalty, of course.”

  The Little Miss Doll, symbol of white America. Tell the ghetto kid playing among the stripped-down shells of discarded cars in an empty lot that there is no better playmate than a Little Miss Doll. Tell the little black girl raped first at ten and pregnant by gang bang at thirteen that she needs poise so she can escape into a world of gumdrops and lollipops. White little doll, blonde little doll, sweet little doll. In these times of stark reality we know you are the answer.

  Pure cornball, but corrupt cornball. Straight out of the antediluvian forties. Dallas, Texas, for god and home and country and escapism. With kids in high schools, grade schools radicalizing themselves, with kids in colleges getting their brains blown out, it defies belief to sit and watch this sort of madness and know that there are people who really believe it matters, that it has some relevance to what our world is really like. This exploitation of the young, this brainwashing of the female, it is part and parcel of the conceptual inability of most of our society to realize that all the senseless persiflage over which they’ve cooed for fifty years is invalid, harmful, criminal.

  Invalid? You tell me: the reigning OLM came out with an introduction from Mister Lynn (now wearing a sequined jacket and looking exactly like an overaged Jim Nabors with that incredible Alfred E. Neuman “What, Me Worry?” grin) and did her pouter-pigeon walk before the throng. All she did was walk across the stage, and the look the poor child sported was one of expectation, of waiting for the applause, merely because she was there, as though her mere appearance should spark ovations. Invalid? You tell me how relevant to an ennobling lifestyle can be an orientation that says because you are lovely, you deserve approbation and riches.

  But even this congeries of evils did not plumb the bottom. Yet to come was the talent division and the final selections of winners.

  The first little girl in the talent division of the OLM came out and sang “I Believe.” You know—I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows

  …you know the one. The poor little thing trembled and shook so badly her voice had a ghastly tremolo. She was petrified out of her mind. Her parents and the pageant coordinators, putting so much emphasis on what is little better than an inadequate version of the Original Amateur Hour, had invested success, in this child’s mind, with such portents, that she flubbed and twitched terribly. The torment of the young; dance for our guests, honey. Sing your song. Say da-da.

  As Cindy commented, the really sick ones are the parents. Feeding their own failed dreams on the flesh of their children. How much money, how many grueling hours of training go into battering a child to perform like a monkey? How much surrogate pleasure do the manipulators vampirically enjoy molding a child to dance and spin and raise her hands to god in song, so she can tremble like a pneumonia victim for an audience of clothing merchants?

  And oh, goddamn goddamn the shadow of Shirley Temple still sprawled across those children. Jennifer Childers, eight years old, from Satellite Beach, Florida, singing and dancing to the old-time Temple favorite, “Animal Crackers in My Soup.” One more little girl in the image of cute Shirley…long blonde locks, crackly voice, ineffable coyness, old before her years. I would send their mothers and fathers through meat grinders with their shoes on.

  What have these children by way of natural resources? At that age, plastic, still opening, they have only innocence that they can perfect. And that being stolen from them in the Dallas Apparel Mart—they have nothing, they are perverted at the touch.

  Mae Rusan, from Fort Worth, belting like Sophie Tucker, rolling her hips, gutter-voicing her “Happiness Medley.” So anti-child, so anti-innocence, I had to turn away. Ninety minutes of primetime on Channel 11 while the universe burns.

  There was more, much much more. But why belabor it? Women wonder why men wage war, why they think of women as empty-headed totems to accouter their evenings out, why gold star mothers take pride in the corpses of their sons blasted to bits in the Nam. Why wonder?

  Why try to find complex reasons? They are all there, in ninety minutes of prurience and debasement, as the bastion of Democracy works its way on its young.

  Channel 11 has asked me to point out that it did not
originate this show, that it merely carried it through the facilities of the Universal Television Network, that it is responsible for such excellent shows as 1985 and the upcoming special, I’m 17, Pregnant and Frightened. That it will be broadcasting in stereo Midsummer Rock on Wednesday, September 2, at 7:00 p.m.

  Okay, I’ve mentioned it, and I spread praise to them for their good works. Now tell the ladies how good you are, KTTV; I can dig it, but what about “Our Little Miss”?

  Did someone mention pornography?

  78: 11 SEPTEMBER 70

  In a week when my eyes have seen yet another Los Angeles riot; the bizarre death of another good man, KMEX news director Ruben Salazar; the Middle East about to explode; Nixon ignoring his responsibilities at home in favor of “saving the world” while his own country tumbles to dust; American Legionnaires loudly protesting their patriotism while the antique ethics they espouse wither and atrophy; high schools and colleges postponing their openings because other patriots won’t support them; taxes raised again despite Yorty/Reagan promises to the contrary; in a week such as this, I choose to look away and try to support my life minus the pain, absenting the anguish

  …just for a little while.

  The good thing about indulging myself with this column is that I can escape when the need arises. I can turn from the rivers of lava that flow through the streets and talk about friendship and good acting and retying old bonds. It’s nowhere near as important as the pivotal issues of our day, but, Jesus, friendship is one of the few things to which each of us can still cling, and few things are as necessary for maintaining one’s sanity.