Reality show Toddlers & Tiaras accompanies young ambitious beauty pageant contestants and their families during the preparations for the beauty pageants as well as the pageants themselves. It gives the viewer a chance to »see behind the curtain« of contestants' lives and the mechanisms behind the pageants. The show displays the contestants' life story, their reason for competing and also their family dynamic. The genre itself has been the subject of numerous researches, from the production point as well as the audience's. Reality TV is mostly known for its ability to spark moral dilemma and moral judgement, which help hold the viewers' attention. The goal of this thesis was to find out how exactly is moral dilemma displayed in the reality show Toddllers & Tiaras, in what way are the relationships between parents and their competing children represented and in what way are represented the relationships between the parents themselves. With the help of carefully chosen elements, mostly used in Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, I have conducted an analysis of two study cases. I chose the study cases based on the displayed girls' age group, their popularity and the fact that the show is otherwise unavailable to watch in Slovenia. Within the study cases I have focused my analysis on the representation of the following concepts: child-centredness, performing femininity and hyper sexualisation. I argue that these contribute to representation of moral dilemma. I have concluded that the show is prioritising representation of the moral dilemma with the help of production techniques.
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