Appalled viewers of “Toddlers & Tiaras” are flooding the show with protests after an episode featured a kiddie-pageant mom dressing her 4-year-old as Dolly Parton — complete with fake breasts and buttocks.
“It is extremely disturbing the things these parents are allowing their children to wear,” Marion A. Vail Pollak wrote on the show’s Facebook page.
“Where is child protective services when you need them? Enhancements? Really? . . . What the heck are you enhancing?”
In the episode, which aired Wednesday night on TLC, mom Lindsay Jackson dressed 4-year-old Maddy in the Parton get-up, covered by a sequined red gown, as Maddy’s “outfit of choice” for the “Hearts and Crowns” pageant.
“It was an outfit made for me when I used to compete in pageants,” Lindsay explained in the episode.
“When she wears the fake boobs and fake butt, it’s an added, extra bonus.
“It’s really funny when she comes out onstage. Everyone thinks it’s hysterical. All of a sudden, they realize that not only is she Dolly, but she has the enhancements just like Dolly.”
Maddy, who’s wearing the costume at the competition (complete with a mountain of fake blond hair), puts her hands over her chest in embarrassment when another 4-year-old points to her chest and asks, “What is that?”
She then goes on the stage, where she shakes her hips and wiggles her behind as a mini-Dolly Parton. (The judges liked the act, and she eventually won “Sweetest Face.”)
“She’s a beautiful child but the boobs and buttcheeks [were] not appropriate,” wrote Joanna Rogers.
“Isn’t this child pornography or something?” wrote Buffy Smith, while Karen Beninanto weighed in with, “The ultimate in bad taste.”
Lindsay Jackson and her mother, Barbara Jackson, were on the “Today” show Wednesday morning to talk about that night’s episode.
“With anything, people are gonna think things are over-the-top,” Lindsay said. “To some people, it’s over-the-top. To us, it’s just what happens. It’s normal.”
After the episode aired, not everyone was a hater, though.
“I don’t have a problem with the enhancements,” wrote Debbie Watts. “It was a costume . . . if it was Halloween, people would think it was cute and funny.”
Those comments, though, were few and far between on the show’s Facebook page.
“Fake boobs are going to be a drop in that dysfunctional bucket,” wrote Heather Campbell Harris.
TLC officials had no comment.