If you’re eager to watch scantily clad children spreading their legs for the cameras, you’re either a pedophile or a fan of Lifetime’s hit show Dance Moms. Centered on Abby Lee Dance Studio in Pittsburgh, the show follows a group of fanatic moms, their dancing daughters, and head choreographer and coach extraordinaire Abby Lee Miller, who weds the near-psychotic rage of Teresa Giudice with the vituperation of Simon Cowell in perfect reality television matrimony. In spite of all this, her character—because I refuse to denigrate any human being to that level of callous virulence—is rather entertaining, propelling the show into a successful second season.
This week’s episode featured much of the predictable yet compelling content we keep tuning back in for. Dance mom Holly Frazier questions the appropriateness of Abby’s choice to use guns in the girls’ Charlie’s Angels-themed group number. Emotions run high as moms Kelly Hyland and Christi Lukasiak struggle with how to comfort their crying daughters after a particularly critical tirade by Abby. While the show does focus primarily on the aspirations, cogitations, and interactions of the moms, the girls, the youngest of whom is seven, are inevitably thrown into the spotlight.
Dance Moms is by no means the only reality show to focus on children. TLC is chock-full of such programming, with shows like 19 Kids and Counting, Sister Wives, and Little People, Big World that feature the daily struggles and stresses of atypical families. More infamously, TLC has brought us Toddlers in Tiaras, shedding light on the competitive world of children’s beauty pageants. Network television, too, has featured reality shows that center on children, like Kid Nation and The Baby Borrowers, but both were cancelled after legal challenges that questioned whether these shows were causing harm to the featured kids.
By nature, reality television lies in a gray zone between scripted series and documentary, the former requiring financial compensation and legal protections for child safety, while the latter is free from the safeguards ensured by child labor laws. So shows like Dance Moms, which feature pre-planned events and interviews that involve children, blur the line between reality and fiction. Though generally treated as documentaries, reality shows have come under increasing fire for causing harm to children and unfairly compensating them for their “roles” in reality programming.
Another Pennsylvania-set show, Jon and Kate Plus 8, faced criticism from actor’s unions and children’s rights groups who claimed that the program caused psychological harm to the children—it showed them in compromising positions during an infamous potty-training episode—and ultimately violated child labor laws by not compensating the child performers. The state of Pennsylvania pursued a lawsuit, but eventually dropped the charges under stipulation that the children receive ample revenues from the show to be kept in a trust fund until they reach adulthood.
The Jon and Kate Plus 8 fiasco highlights several problems with the status quo. First, there are no comprehensive national laws protecting the rights of children in the film industry, and the only federal law establishing child labor standards, the Fair Labor Standards Act, exempts child actors. Thus the current system is a patchwork of laws across different states that provide varying degrees of protection for children. While states with large contingents of production studios like California and New York have fairly robust protection, Dance Moms’ home state of Pennsylvania does not.
Second, reality show producers need to recognize that the children in their shows are essential to the shows’ success. The children need to be compensated as such, and shows need to file the proper paperwork to officially hire the minors.
The last, and more looming problem, involves the child’s consent. While many shows claim that children are willing participants in the programming, it remains unclear to what extent children are able to make decisions about their careers. The legal working age in most states is 16, but child actors are allowed to work as soon as they leave the womb, with parents deciding what roles they take on. The difference is that adult actors make money by appearing in reality programming, while reality TV children do not. Add on the potential for psychological harm that these children face and it quickly becomes apparent that the treatment of reality TV kids is child labor at best and child abuse at worst.
The state needs to step in and safeguard the vulnerability of these child performers by passing comprehensive laws establishing safe labor practices and fair compensation. In the case of Dance Moms, the girls perform intricate pirouettes and pliées for a national audience, and they deserve to get paid.
