When I read Matt Richtel’s article, “The Competing Views on Competition,” last month in The New York Times I couldn’t stop thinking about what one of the chess moms I met told me while I was researching Playing to Win: “Raising kids is a big experiment and I won’t know till later if I did [...]
Today I woke up excited it was Friday– but then I realized I wouldn’t be getting a new episode of Cheer and I had to hit the snooze button to recover. Cheer, which has aired on CMT for the past six weeks, quickly became one of my favorite reality series, warming my normally analytical sociological [...]
This originally appeared in The Huffington Post’s Culture Section. Write a bad mommy confessional and be rewarded with multiple weeks on bestseller lists, riches, and fame/infamy. (See: Chua, Amy [Tiger Mom]; Druckerman, Pamela [American mom, French parenting]; Weiss, Dara-Lynn [Diet Devil in Vogue]). And then there are the television shows. In the grand tradition of [...]
Lifetime’s Season 2 of Dance Moms continues to get sillier and sillier as the contrivances spin out faster than a terrible fouetté turn. What can you say when Kendall leaves Abby’s studio and ends up at Candy Apples in Ohio besides, “Yeah, right! Producer interference!” in Episode 8, “The Runaway Mom?” And Abby’s decision to [...]
During the summer of stage mothers, Lifetime’s Dance Moms emerged as a breakout hit for the network. From its debut in mid-July 2011 to its season finale this past week, the show steadily attracted more viewers (up 62% since its premiere). With about 1.6 million watching each episode, it’s not surprising that the network has [...]
This has certainly been the summer of stage mothers– at least on television. We have the Dance Moms on Lifetime, who continue to bring the crazy. If anything, it’s ramping up as the Abby Lee Dance Company prepares for its big “nationals” in Tahoe. Stay tuned for a smackdown with Crazy Cathy from Candy Apples… [...]
Wednesdays at 10 pm are really must-see-TV for me. Thanks to my DVR I can watch TLC’s tried and true Toddlers & Tiaras and Lifetime’s newcomer, Dance Moms. I’ve long said that in many ways competitive dance and child beauty pageants have a lot in common. Imagine if JonBenét had been a competitive dancer and [...]
