Time passing and beauty pageants

James worries about time passing. He says that time feels like it’s speeding up. I know that feeling but it worries me that he does. I don’t think I felt like that at his age. I always considered it was a mathematical thing – that, as we get older, each year is a smaller fraction of our life so far lived, so inevitably it feels shorter. But, hmm, is time speeding up?


‘I won’t be a child much longer,’ he said, sadly.
‘You’re not that old,’ I said, smiling.
‘I’m nearly a teenager.’
What?
‘I’ll be a teenager this year. And then in four years’ time...’
‘Oh stop it.’
‘Why can’t childhood last longer?’

Why indeed?

And then, as I idly clicked through Facebook, I saw that my nevermetbutmuchadored friend TL Tyson had posted a new vlog. I love her vlog. I love her, full stop. She’s a very talented writer who lives in Canada; who has just the most fecund imagination and a wild sense of humour. She’s someone who turns your thinking upside down. Anyhow, she’d posted a vlog about child beauty pageants which rams home the point about how, for some children, childhood is being cut short in a pretty dramatic way.

Watch it.



I have no words for this. It sickens me. If it sickens you too, then maybe nick the link for this and post it on your blog, your Facebook page, your Twitter account?  Can we not shame these people into stopping this travesty?

As Tee says: ‘When did child abuse become a source of entertainment?’