The E! show The Soup revealed a promo for a new show coming up on TLC, a.k.a the Trainwreck Lives Channel, that combines all your favorite elements from their other popular shows. Take a look:

The Interwebs have been aflutter over Jon and Kate Gosselin. Who did what to whom? How much of a role did the cameras play in the disintegration of their relationship? Did their greed compromise their judgment as parents and as life partners? Who cheated on whom? It’s easy to point fingers, especially since they’ve chosen to live their lives so publicly.

I have no great sympathy for their claims that the media should back off, respecting their privacy as a family. When you open your life as they have (and as I have on my blog), you have to take the good with the bad. There will be those that love you no matter what. There will be people who will celebrate every stumble and heartbreak you experience. Others will question everything you do. It’s part and parcel of the deal.

In the end, though, what we have is a couple who is ending their relationship in a very public way. Regardless of my opinions about their relationship and parenting choices, I can’t help but watch their faces and see so much that is familiar.

I saw it months ago, the lack of physical contact, the emotional detachment, the harsh words that were only half-joking. They got further and further from each other. Soon, that interview couch could not have been long enough.

Eyes were swollen. Walls were up. The end was near.

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After all the pomp and circumstance surrounding President Obama’s inauguration, I thought I’d chill out and see what TiVo recorded for me over the past few days.  Little did I know I’d witness another kind of pageantry on, frankly, a creepy scale.

Toddlers and Tiaras is a documentary that first aired on TLC last year. Now the network is turning it into a weekly series, going behind the scenes of the child beauty pageant industry. (The first episode airs on Jan. 27th.) We’re not talking about teenagers here. The kids featured in the documentary were between 5-9 years of age.

I can summarize the show pretty quickly. Young girls wear tons of makeup, hideous dresses, up-dos, fake nails and eyelashes, and perform cheesy talent routines in the hope of winning, well, their entry fees back. And possibly winning trophies that I’m not sure would fit in the back of the SUVs some of these pageant families drive.

Some of these pageant-moms pull out all the stops so their kids will win. Lose your top front baby teeth? No problem! Get a “flipper”, which is the equivalent of false teeth for kids.  Have a professional makeup artist doll up your kid. 

One mother, when asked why she has her daughter doing pageants, said “it’s a great way to help her build confidence and self esteem.”

Honey! How about letting your daughter be comfortable with the way she looks without plastering her face in more makeup than Tammy Faye Bakker? How about letting her be a kid!

The one cute moment of the entire show was when the producers asked one of the little girls what she would do with the money should she win the pageant. She said she’d like to get a cow.

I hope that little girl, and her bovine, can retire from pageantry and live happily ever after.

Jon and Kate Plus Eight has become nothing but one big infomercial. The couple’s wedding vow renewal was no exception.

This episode, “For Better or Worse”, featured 60 minutes of all the Grand Wailea Resort Hotel and Spa in Hawaii had to offer … from the spa (yes the 4-year-old girls got pedicures), the hair salon, the chapel, the catering services, the lawn overlooking the ocean. TLC could have just shown a video of the premises, and I wouldn’t have had the added annoyance of enduring Jon and Kate. (They did renew their vows, by the way, in between resort glamour shots.)

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This takes the father-daughter dance and dramatically ups the weird factor.

According to a documentary “Purity Balls” currently airing on TLC, these events are “where fathers and daughters subscribe to the single fundamental notion of chastity, with the fathers pledging to protect their young daughters’ purity, and the daughters pledging to remain virgins until they marry.” The narrator stated one in every six American girls take purity pledges, and girls as young as five are encouraged to attend a Purity Ball.

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