In a wake-up-call for pushy parents around the world, Eden Wood, the world’s most famous beauty pageant contestant, announced her retirement last month. Well, her parents did; she’s six.
With 300 pageant wins under her tiara, she (her parents) reasoned that she’d got as much as she could out of the pageant scene. Time to move on to a recording career, touring and world domination. How do you compete with that?
It’s tough being a pushy parent these days. There was once a time when kids just wanted to drive fire trucks or space shuttles or run Macquarie Bank when they grew up. All parents had to do was send their kids to expensive schools, force them to study while their friends were out playing marbles and hope like hell their offspring had some degree of intellectual ability.
Not any more. The stakes have risen and if your child doesn’t have a public profile by the time they’re out of nappies, well, you’ve probably failed as a parent. Being famous is the new being an astronaut.
Now I’m not a pushy parent of course, but I am concerned that my eight-year-old son may have blown his chance at fame. He’s certainly missed the window for beauty pageant star, and any hopes he might have had of becoming an Olympic gymnast are well past.
Same goes for prodigious pianist. Solo round-the-world sailing has been done to death.
And he’d just be playing catch-up if he started ballet classes now. Professional soccer or golf might still be on the cards, just; but he’ll need to get into an elite development program soon or he may as well cross that off too. (As I keep reminding him, Tiger Woods was swinging a golf club at the age of two).
As for music, well, I pointed out to him that Michael Jackson – his favourite singer – had notched up a string of top ten hits by the time he was eight. Didn’t motivate him though. He seems more interested in Star Wars and mastering joined-up writing. Well that’s hardly going to establish a strong brand, is it?
There’s the reality TV option of course. But even here I think he’s gone too far down the wrong path. He should’ve been well on the way to developing a back-story by now.
When appearing on Australia’s Got Talent you need to be able to say you were listening to your parents’ soul records at age three (we don’t have a record player), or that you spent your toddler years hanging around jazz clubs (he didn’t).
He can’t even say he came from a broken home or had a drug habit. A pity. Because the truth is, a childhood spent playing with Lego, kicking the footy at the park on weekends and being an about-average student at the local primary school hardly makes for a compelling vignette on X-Factor.
To be fair, he’s not totally talentless. He does do a great impression of Darth Vader and he’s quite a handy right-arm medium-slow. But he’s hardly the next Glenn McGrath. Last year he wanted to do robot dancing at the year two talent show. It was a nice gesture, but we had to pull him out.
He wasn’t prepared - what if there was a talent spotter there? Turns out there wasn’t; but one kid premiered his CGI animation, so robot dancing would’ve looked a bit amateur in comparison.
I don’t generally like to compare him to other kids, but I couldn’t help notice that little Kevin is well on the way to becoming a concert violinist. And Robby has that ‘X-factor’ that judges are looking for these days. It’s going to be hard to compete with that.
The older he gets, the more his options dry up. Lead in Harry Potter? Gone. Prodigious junior artist? Gone. Youngest recruit for an international soccer team? Gone. I’m starting to wonder whether he’s actually even serious about this fame thing at all.
I’ve even started playing one of the Pussy Cat Dolls’ songs around the house to try and create some enthusiasm (“When I grow up I wanna be famous, I wanna be a star, I wanna be in movies. When I grow up I wanna see the world, drive nice cars, I wanna have boobies.”) But it seems to be having limited impact.
Recently he’s been saying he wants to be an archaeologist. An archaeologist! Indiana Jones aside, I can’t name a single archaeologist.
So while Eden Wood moves on to promoting her merchandise range and action figures, my son is stuck in a cycle of normality. He might just have to settle for a day job.
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