St. Patrick's Day Festivities: Parade, Music, Dancing and More

You later admit you didn't read the article, but just seeing a picture of little girls is enough to trigger bashing Sarah Palin? You've sunk to a new low. Even little girls play into your liberal agenda? You've given me more reason to avoid this site.

hey, i love that kids are dancing. but if it is about dancing, then makeup is unnecessary and potentially harmful. anyone who dances for any length of time is going to perspire. under the circumstances, a layer of makeup is bad for your skin. do ball players put on makeup before a big game?

the wigs are creepy, too. why isn't their god-given hair acceptible?

Funny you mention it, I was actually wondering if any St. Pat's parades have anything other than unions marching?

People who find this creepy are saying more about themselves than these girls. It's a family activity, not that much different than hockey parents getting up at 4AM and taking Jimmy to the Pepsi center to dress up like a hockey player.

Question: Can someone be a "toddler" and a WORLD CHAMPION at the same time?
Or did you miss that part of the article too?

My 'too Catholic' comment was directed toward yesterday's girls whom these girls are imitating. Ireland is an extremely Catholic country, where today 92% self identify as Catholic. These dance troops wear dresses meant to evoke some older day, not today. What I'm suggesting, having been schooled in Catholic elementary schools, is that the makeup would never have flown back in the day. Certainly no girl in my schools could have gotten a face like that past the nuns. They'd have the girl wash it off. That's what I meant by "too Catholic" for that. Back in the day, the day these girls are recalling, there'd be none of the makeup. At least my Catholic upbringing leads me to that guess.

I'll grant that today things are different. I don't doubt troops in Ireland wear the same stuff. And it's a lot better knowing that the girls are older than I thought.

Partly it's just a personal preference thing. I always hated makeup. My wife never wears any. I like that better. Hate heavy makeup. Just think it looks unattractive. I think future generations will look at the makeup women wear today with the same regard with which we view powdered wigs and whalebone corsets. They'll wonder what the hell we were thinking. that's my prediction.

I had no interest in reading the article because it was about a parade and I don't get parades. I've been in parades as a boy and watched parades as a boy and I hate them either way. They bore me to tears. I'd rather do a hundred things than watch a parade (or worse, march). And then there was that picture of a highly made up girl who I thought looked about six with a trophy and I thought to myself: Jon Benet Ramsey of Buffalo. I assumed it was some little 'miss ireland' thing. I had no interest whatsoever in looking at the story. So I passed it by for a while.

But then it started to gather some comments. Now even with stories I am not inclined to read, usually I'll jump down to the comments if it looks like there's some activity. So when this article which had no comments at all the first day suddenly had four the next morning, I figured that even though I had no interest in the article, I'd see what the sudden activity was.

And then the very first comment was exactly the thing that struck me, and that was that this girl looked like JB-R. And then the next three comments backed that up and so I jumped to conclusions (as I am prone to do) and well, sorry for getting all soap boxy about makeup and going on about beauty pageants when it was about their dancing. And sure, congratulations to these girls. But I still think it looks weird.

I saw a very interesting documentary (an episode of American Experience, it might have been) about the Miss America pageant and how, back in the 50s, it was the king of television. Everyone in America tuned in. It was a huge deal. And they interviewed all these ex miss Americas who are now old ladies. And the all looked grotesque. Way thick makeup. Huge eyelashes. Weirdly tight skin from the face lifts that just looked unnatural--like Joe Biden in that veep debate.

And then they interviewed Gloria Steinem, who is ardently anti beauty pageant. And she looked astounding. She looked fantastic. Her face was natural and beautiful and radiant. She looked great. Her hair was gray and it looked fabulous. All the former Miss Americas looked all Tammy Faye Baker. Gloria Steinem looked all Meryl Streep. Give me Meryl Streep, not Liz Taylor.

Anyway, that's enough ramble. Sorry for hijacking the post. Hope your St. Patty's day was nice. Good luck girls. Lose the shadow. You're plenty pretty enough without it.