Toddlers & Tiaras: Dark Side of Reality TV sheds light on Honey Boo Boo's pageant origins

TLC has had its fair share of controversial TV shows, but none have garnered as much attention as Toddlers & Tiaras. The show, which started airing in 2009 and aired its last season in 2016, focused on the world of child beauty pageants.

The show gave viewers an inside look at what it takes to prepare for the pageants and what it looks like for the parents and children to compete, eventually giving TLC a number of spin-off series, including one of their most infamous shows: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

Now, VICE's Dark Side of Reality TV is taking a closer look at Toddlers & Tiaras with former stars of the show sharing their experience with death threats, "creepy correspondences" from fans of their children, and the long-lasting issues that competing in the pageants has left some of the stars with.

In the 2000s, TLC had taken a heavy focus on reality TV and in 2009, the massive subculture of child beauty pageants caught their attention. Toddlers & Tiaras presented itself as more of a docuseries than a fully produced reality TV series in that the camera followed the preparation and competition without producer intervention.

Former TLC executive Jack Tarantino said in an interview on the VICE episode, "It had humor, it had drama. Kind of that whole recipe for reality TV success."

While the show did reach massive levels of success, it wasn't all as glamorous as the show made it look. EverRose, one of the children who was featured in the series as a child competing in pageants, was featured in the episode. Between clips of her competing in the show, EverRose and her mother discussed their experience with being thrust into the spotlight.

While EverRose said that she enjoyed being in the pageants and loved the fact that she thought she was going to be "famous," she revealed that the show has also given her issues that she still struggles with today.

"During the filming, I mean, I just noticed that they were following her and just videoing everything she would put in her mouth," Kayla, mother of former child pageant star EverRose, said in an interview segment on VICE's show.

EverRose said that the fact that there was such a heavy focus on her eating on the show has stuck with her into adulthood. "As an adult, I can't eat in front of people because I'm self-conscious about it, cause the whole world watched me eat. Even to this day, I struggle with my relationship with food."

Two pageant moms that were interviewed for the show said that their children weren't the only ones to deal with major off-screen issues because of the attention that TLC put onto their families. According to Kelly Lyerly, mom of the "Tiara Twins" who appeared on the show in 2012 and 2013, death threats and strangers questioning her parenting were common when the show was on.

She said that people would tell her she was a terrible parent and that her children would hate her in the future. Additionally, she revealed that the show ending in 2016 didn't make the death threats stop and that renewed social media attention on the series has made them start up again. "This time the person was calling my phone and telling me that they were gonna kill me," she revealed on the show.

Death threats weren't the only unwanted attention from strangers that the show put on their children. Darci McHenry, a pageant mom who appeared on the show in 2013, said that "grown men" would message her daughter's fan pages inappropriate things. She said, "We started getting things like videos sent to us, and that opened us up to getting some pretty creepy correspondences. The comments were getting crazier and crazier."

According to Wendy Dickey, one of the pageant moms who went viral for dressing her daughter as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, says that TLC "used" the families they featured on the show and that the editing and spin the show put on the world of child pageants was responsible for bringing the negative attention on the parents.

"Toddlers & Tiaras pushed the agenda, and they were really behind some of the negative media," she said while another parent pushed back against the concept that the pageant world, particularly the outfits and glamorous makeup, was inappropriate for the ages of the children.