Melissa Wynn has all along defended her 5-year-old daughter's participation in beauty pageants despite the uproar created when the "Toddlers & Tiaras" reality show came to Shamokin for filming earlier this year.
Now that the popular but controversial show has been broadcast to its international audience, criticism has boiled up again for the Dalmatia family.
In fact, it started before the Wynns were featured in the show's season finale, which aired on TLC at 10 p.m. Wednesday. A clip on MSNBC's website first posted Tuesday fanned the flames.
And Wynn again went on the defensive through Facebook posts.
The advance clip showed Wynn and her daughter, Carley, during filming at their home. A resulting story by MSNBC entertainment news contributor Anna Chan describes how a "pageant-obsessed mama can be seen forcing her little girl to practice even after Carley insists she knows the routine. But that's not all.
"Melissa, who admits to spending $30,000 in the past year on pageants," the story continues, "isn't happy when her little mini-me doesn't want to play Cruella de Vil," the story says.
"But Carley," the story says, "had the last word. While doing a run-through of her routine, the little girl declared to her mom, "'You are driving me crazy.'"
Mother: It's 'orchestrated'
Wynn, a Shamokin businesswoman, posted publicly on her Facebook site Wednesday that, while it's a reality show, there is a lot of "acting."
"Carley and I were both fed many lines to make the show more enticing and every location, every scenario was orchestrated by TLC ... a lot of scenes were done and redone again and again... reality TV is not so reality," she wrote. She said an hour of filming - including the scene where she's encouraging Carley to practice - shows "the most dramatic 60 seconds" in the clip. She says it was "edited to look like it was EXTREME ... there was a lot of dialogue and we sat there literally for 30 minutes laughing and talking, and that of course will not be shown," she wrote.
Wynn also disputed the $30,000 figure quoted in the story.
"I did not spend $30,000 last year on pageants. I settled on a much lower number during the interview, but TLC liked the higher amount ... That's reality TV for you," she posted.
The Wynns declined comment for this story.
'Negative backlash'
In a letter to the editor published soon after a story about the filming in February, Melissa Wynn said she contacted local media about the show "solely due to the fact that we are proud of our daughter and also because we wanted to share our magnificent news with the area that we love so much." She said the "negative backlash" was undeserved, as is criticism of her daughter.
"As a mother, I will go to the end of the Earth to protect my children," she wrote, "but I refuse to hide her extraordinary success due to a closed-minded area." Most critics, who addressed the issue at the time through social networking and also The News-Item's "Sound Off" column, said they had no criticism of the children but instead of parents who allow their children to participate in pageants at such a young age.
"Toddlers & Tiaras," which debuted in 2009, has been the target of some criticism, but producer Tom Rogan was quoted in a TODAYshow.com story earlier this year saying, "We document what's happening in the field. We're not causing these things to happen; we're just seeing what people do in the lead-up to the pageant."
Reaction to MSNBC
The clip seen on MSNBC, which was also posted at the "Toddlers & Tiaras" Facebook page, produced dozens of comments, most of them negative.
"Talk about exploiting children ... this is just wrong, really really wrong," one comment said.
Another took a more understanding tone.
"Not much difference from what I have seen and heard come out of mouths from parents and sports ... actually I have heard worse!"
Another made a sports analogy, with an even more positive tone. "But look what seven-day-a-week training for six hours a day did for Tiger Woods. Bet he's glad his Dad was so tough, huh!"
The well-known Huffington Post website Wednesday afternoon jumped into the issue, posting a story - accompanied by a still of Wynn taken from the "Toddlers & Tiaras" clip - titled "Top 5 Lessons Normal Parents Can Learn From 'Toddlers & Tiaras.'" advising parents to praise intellectual, creative and athletic accomplishments, praise displays of kind behaviors, provide incentives that are based on factors they can control, promote positive relationships with other girls, and to treat your kids with compassion without projecting your insecurities onto them.
Other controversies
The finale isn't the first "Toddlers & Tiaras" this season to create international headlines. Earlier this month, the Parents Television Council advocacy group criticized the series for showing a three-year-old contestant named Paisley dressed as Julia Roberts' prostitute character from the movie "Pretty Woman." The mother told Entertainment Weekly that the show was clipped to show just that outfit and not the entire routine, which later has Paisley dressed as Roberts' character in a demure brown dress.
The show also came under fire for showing another young pageant contestant dressed as Dolly Parton, complete with an outfit padded to reproduce the country singer's famed hourglass figure.