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  Still, I didn’t want to discourage Sophie. After all, wouldn’t it have been wonderful if those rugby lesbians had taken cotillion? I’m not saying we need to raise a generation of Little Lord and Lady Fauntleroy’s but, just think, if Paris Hilton had taken cotillion, I’m sure she would’ve learned that posing for pictures with your tongue down another’s larynx is considered distasteful. Ditto crooning crotch-grabber Usher.

  But line dancing? What are these little kids supposed to do after they finish the dance? Retire to their tables at the club with Bunny and Sissy and debate the relative merits of their small-, mid-, and large cap holdings?

  Still, there was more to like about cotillion than not. The cotillion teacher made the kids recite “When at the store with Mom to shop, I must not run or skip or hop!”

  Or, as the Princess did when she was three, loudly announce as we wheeled by the beer and wine aisle that I shouldn’t forget my “mommy juice.” Thanks ever so.

  So yes, I suppose cotillion could teach a few good lessons and the National League of Junior Cotillions seems to be trying to stay relevant. For older students, there’s even a class called “Digital Courtesy in Public Places.” I’m not sure but I think it means to never give anybody the finger.

  There’s even a course in sports etiquette. Perhaps Barry Bonds and his size nine hat could teach that one. (“Hey kids! When injecting extract of bull pituitary gland directly into your buttocks, try to avoid unseemly flailing and screaming.”)

  Raising a proper young woman in the South isn’t as easy as it used to be. Apparently, things aren’t any better if you’re an international star.

  Madonna has announced that she won’t let her daughter date until she’s eighteen.

  Of all the moms I expected to have my back on the dating thing, Madonna had to be the least likely. This is the woman who wrote a coffee-table book called Sex that was so steamy it was shipped to stores individually shrink-wrapped.

  But motherhood changes everything, don’t it, Madge?

  We’re always reading about what a strict mom Madonna has turned out to be. If young Lourdes doesn’t pick up her clothes off the floor, they’re thrown out “to teach her a lesson.”

  She’s not allowed to watch TV (“rots the mind”) or eat any junk food (“rots the body.”) And Madonna famously wouldn’t let the kid try out for a movie role because she wanted her to have as normal a childhood as possible. As though any kid whose nappies were designed by Versace could have a normal childhood.

  Madonna admits to being furious when her ten-year-old wears jeans that are too tight.

  So far, it seems as if Lourdes’ childhood is shaping up to be almost as much fun as toe fungus.

  Who would’ve imagined it? Madonna’s conservative views on child-rearing make Laura Bush look like a hillbilly heroin-addicted pole dancer by comparison.

  She has even announced that she wants Lourdes to wear her Stella McCartney–designed wedding gown when she walks down the aisle, like a virgin of course.

  The gown is, I’m sure, sitting in a box somewhere having been dutifully “preserved” at the dry-cleaners just like any good Southern mama would do.

  Madonna appears to be channeling the hopes and dreams of the Birmingham, Alabama, Junior League mom rather than the cone-bra wearing slut puppy we thought we knew.

  Naturally, I agree with Madonna on all this stuff. We’ve told our kid that she won’t be allowed to date until she’s about thirty-two and then only with her daddy and me riding in the backseat. Sure, the sound of our his-and-her oxygen tanks clicking away will be somewhat disruptive but so be it.

  If you think Madonna and I are overreacting consider that just last week one of the little boys in my kid’s fourth grade class called her a “h-o-e ho!” Clearly he didn’t mean that she was a garden tool. And clearly, my Precious is no ho or hoe. Dude just knew it was a bad word for girls.

  The same day, I saw an article in Seventeen magazine that showed, with graphic illustrations, how to help your boyfriend put on a condom.

  Because only a loser seventeen-year-old would actually read Seventeen, it’s not lost on me or Madonna that this stuff is being read by girls more in the thirteen to sixteen range.

  Although never by our girls of course.

  The thing that Madonna will never have to contend with that every Southern mother trying to raise a decent daughter must deal with is the damn beauty pageant.

  Look, y’all, for the last time, pageants are moneymakers. They don’t give a shit about your kid. Didn’t any of y’all see Little Miss Sunshine?

  As Sophie retrieved the mail not long ago, I cringed when I saw the return address: The National American Miss Junior Pre-Teen Pageant.

  “Throw that crap away,” I told her.

  “You shouldn’t say ‘crap’,” she said.

  “You’re right, honey. Throw that shit away.”

  “But it says right here that I could be America’s next National American Miss Junior Pre-Teen!”

  “Pageants are for morons, kitten,” I said.

  “Jennybeth is in pageants all the time,” Soph said, citing the one kid in her class that I absolutely can’t stand. I know you should love all children, even the homely ones, but I just can’t. I’ll leave that to Brad and Angelina ’cause, shit, they can always buy the kid a new face or, in Jennybeth’s pageant-obsessed case, personality.

  “This one says it’s different,” said Soph. “Just look at the literature.”

  A few minutes later, I realized that perhaps I’d judged this pageant too harshly.

  Turns out that this would be the one and only kid pageant that was about putting kids first! I know it’s true because they said so!

  “Your little girl will make new friends and have a fabulous time—we’re waiting for her!”

  OK, that’s about a ten on the Creep-o-meter. I’ll just bet you’re waiting for her.

  All we’d need was $380 in sponsorship money before my daughter would “reach her potential” and find out “how far her dreams can take her!”

  They were very careful to avoid any mention of actually having a beauty requirement, but they did manage to discreetly request a “recent photo.” I suppose this is just in case you have, like, a baby’s arm growing out of the top of your head or something.

  I apologize! That was cynical! Shame on me! I have to say the pageant had thought of everything. They even promised to send us tips on how to find sponsors. A less worldly person might consider this a rip-off or even exploitation but, people, pageants are massively big, expensive productions that require, according to the literature, florists!

  And you don’t want some cheesy sound and lighting system, do you? Heaven’s no! Not at the fabulous Renaissance Suites Hotel, which just happens to be Official Pageant Headquarters and has in-room movies and ice machines on odd-numbered floors that makes it just about as close to heaven as any of us can ever hope to get, am I right?

  Of course, the pageant would require you to model a fancy dress, which might set you back a few hundred bucks, but it’s worth it! Poise, presentation, and personality (the 3 Ps!) count for thirty percent each with ten percent for “community involvement,” which turned out to be donating a book or stuffed animal to a good cause. Whew. That was easy. What if we had honestly had to get involved in our community? Ick.

  Still the notion of securing sponsors for Sophie’s entry sounded daunting at first. But then I read further and the pageant had helpful hints for how to approach prospective sponsors such as our dentist, hairdresser, or the owners of favorite local restaurants. Imagine how glad they’ll be to see us!

  And here was the best part: If Sophie didn’t win the poise and presentation, she could still win in the “optionals” category, which is probably where they’d send the girl with the baby arm in her head right away. You could actually win a six-foot-tall trophy for selling the most advertising for the program!

  Sure, it doesn’t sound all that glamorous, but a girl has to start somewhere,
right?

  12

  Britney’s To-Do List: Pick Okra, Cover That Thang Up

  An Open Letter to Britney Spears ’cause she needs to hear it, y’all….

  Dear Brit:

  Girl, I know you don’t know me but you have to trust me on this: I have your back. For real.

  Through all the wild partying and head-shaving and fornicating and tattooing and what not, I’ve got your back. Even though, when you shaved your head, you looked like the world’s only redneck Tibetan monk. (“Y’all, let’s chant and make some more of them sand pixtures, OK, y’all?”) I didn’t lose faith in you.

  Why am I still loyal to you despite everything? Simple. You are me, only with money. OK, and youth and talent and a fairly serious substance abuse problem, but none of that matters, girl, ’cause you are a Southerner and a mama and that makes us sisteren.

  Brit, you’re just a good redneck girl who has, by determination, looks, and savvy management, propelled you and your little family out of Bigfoot, Louisiana, and into Malibu.

  When I think about your rise to stardom, I hear the bouncy lyrics to The Beverly Hillbillies playing in my head. “Kinfolks said, Brit move away from here; Californy is the place you oughta be, so they loaded up the truck and they moved to Bev-er-ly….”

  But Brit, you’re a Southern mama and, although you tried your best to fit in with the high-colonic-addicted Skeletors, at the heart of it, you can’t escape the truth that you’re just a good ol’ Luzianna girl who knows what it’s like to get your hands all scratched up picking okra out of Paw-Paw’s garden.

  Brit, a friend from your hometown e-mailed me not long ago and said she knew you’d gone ape-shit crazy because you didn’t go home for Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday or none of it. Girl, you can’t get above your raisin’ like that. Your precious babies need you to show them what the world outside of Hollywood is like.

  When you didn’t go home to the bayou, it spoke volumes. Didn’t your mama have a pot of gumbo simmering on the back of that Kenmore Elite you bought her? I bet she did.

  You should’ve been bouncing those baby boys on your legs and feedin’ ’em spoon bread dripping in butter, not cavorting all over Nastytown showing your bidness to strangers.

  But, I repeat, I have your back. It may not sound like it but I do. When you were pregnant with either Sean Preston or Jayden, I forget which, I remember thinking, now that’s a girl who hasn’t forgotten how Southern women eat when they’re pregnant.

  Unlike the other Hollywood mommies, who were living off sea urchin flakes and the like, you were eating real food: meat loaf, creamed potatoes, squash casserole. Good baby-growing food!

  Britney, you kept it real out in L.A., even bravely denouncing that brief flirtation with Kabbalah you had on account of they were always hassling you for money and you were like, “Dude, I get enough of that from my baby-daddy.”

  OK, what you really said was that you kicked the centuries-old Jewish mysticism to the curb because “Sean Preston is my religion, now, y’all.”

  I heard that.

  Girl, when all the haters were saying you shouldn’t be riding around with Sean P. in your lap like your very own personal little corn-rowed airbag, I still had your back.

  Look, I remember what it was like to have a four-month-old in the house. You get so tired that you commit all kinds of dumb acts. How else can I explain all those Marie Osmond porcelain dolls ordered off QVC that now sit in my hall closet collecting dust?

  Brit, I have no actual memory of ordering those dolls because I was so damn sleep deprived when my baby was little that there’s no telling what I did. So riding around with a kid strapped to your boobs while driving isn’t a huge shock to me.

  Look, even when Sean Preston had to go to the hospital for a bruised noggin after falling out of his high chair, I didn’t blame you; I blamed your mo-ron nanny. That chick must have been Tori Spelling stupid to blow a pie job like working for you. Listen, girl. If you’d let me baby-sit those boys I promise I’d never take my eyes off of either one of them. I mean never. Think Rosie O’ Donnell looking at an éclair or Charlize Theron.

  That’s what I’m talking about.

  OK, and when you nearly dropped Sean P. while walking down the steps at The Plaza, everybody was hating on you again and I’m like, “Hell-o, y’all, she was walking and holding a baby and chewing gum all at the same time and, well, that’s a lot of multitasking.”

  And, Brit, just when things were really looking bad, they showed you driving around town with Sean P. facing forward in his little car seat.

  Girl, in the South, we don’t really pay attention to forward or backward all that much, but you’re in Hollywood now.

  Always remember that the kid has to face the rear of the car because that way if y’all get hit from behind, the kid can be more helpful in providing information for the inevitable deposition. Hollywood types love to sue one another. They are very litigious. It’s a big word; look it up. Get smart for your babies!

  Brit, the problem, as I see it, is that you had two babies in twelve months. This has caused you go astronaut-lady-in-diapers levels of crazy and nobody seems to understand that.

  Nobody except me. I feel ya. Even Tom Cruise, the King of Crazy, would have to examine the evidence and conclude that you’ve gone and gotten yourself a bad case of postpartum depression. Hell, it’s as plain as the new nose on Cameron Diaz’s face.

  I have to admit I expected more criticism from Tom, but I guess he was too busy to take a break from his creepy obsessive fetal sonogramming of his own kid to worry ’bout you. Still I thought sure that he’d saddle up his high horse and demand that you and every woman who ever had PPD be stoned in the town square or what passes for one in Beverly Hills, Barneys. And by stoned, I don’t mean “high” like you were when you checked into Promises for the eleventy-billionth time, bless your heart.

  Why can’t people see that so many of your problems are caused by having to live your life in front of those hideous paparazzi, who, incidentally, murdered our Princess Diana?

  When you didn’t strap your babies into their car seats correctly, it was, as you said, because you were “instinctively taking measures to protect your children” by quickly fleeing the photographers.

  Brit, I like that you invoked a mother’s instincts. I’ll buy it. Only the snarkiest person would sneer at this and go, “Yeah, just as pioneer woman and cave woman before her took measures to flee the rabid paparazzi roaming the shops and eateries of Rodeo Drive.”

  Instinct is real, y’all. Perhaps it does kick in the same primal response and adrenaline rush that allows petite soccer moms to lift Suburbans with their bare hands to free trapped toddlers.

  Or maybe not.

  Either way, Brit, I still have your back. Gawd, it’s not like you dangled your kids from a balcony like Michael Jackson. Who, by the way, I still get mad at when I think about that fool going to court every day with his personal magician. I don’t even have a regular dry cleaner and he’s got a personal magician? Asshole.

  But, Brit, girl, as much as I love you, I will confess that there have been times where I just felt like I was duty-bound to jump on a jet, economy-class of course, and deal with you myself.

  When I read that your mama and your daddy and your sister weren’t able to talk sense into you, I practically wept.

  Brit, you’ve got to just pick yourself up from this bad publicity, put on your big-girl pan ties (oh, hell, any pan ties at all at this point), and start taking care of yourself and your boys.

  Postpartum or not, Southern mamas don’t act like you’re acting, hanging around those toxic twits Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and the like.

  Seriously, girl, it’s not like you busted up with George Clooney, which would explain a lot of acting out and bad behavior. This was K-Fed. You should be over him in less time than it would take to microwave a bowl of grits.

  Take a cue from another Southern mama who is going through a bumpy detour on love’s highway, Reese
Witherspoon. Reese is divorcing the father of her precious children whose name I forget, but sounds like he’s French so who the hell cares about him anyway. Even so, with all her troubles, you don’t see Reese Witherspoon putting skanks on speed dial as a coping mechanism.

  Brit, you gotta stop flashing your lady parts for every creep with a camera phone or you’re going to lose custody for good and your kids will end up playing with their Tonka trucks in the dirt yard of K-Fed’s newest baby-mama’s doublewide.

  Trust me; I’m, like, psychic on this shit.

  Listen, I know that K-Fed would probably make an OK daddy, but Southern women don’t give up their young’uns no matter what.

  Your babies are beautiful, but, let’s face it, there’s a lot of competition out there in Hollywood and you need to be a stand-up mama or they’ll get lost in the celebrity shuffle.

  With the birth of Suri Cruise and Brad and Angelina’s Shiloh, there’s going to be a lot of competition for the really good slots in day care, girl. You gotta clean up your act. You know it’s going to be hard to be a kid in the same class with Shiloh. When you’re the first member of the new super race, there’s bound to be pressure.

  Poor Suri Cruise will have to go to school with a bag on her head in comparison.

  Still, most Hollywood types are crazy so you may be OK if you don’t do anything else nutty.

  Where, sistah-girl, was the outcry when Tom Cruise told everybody that he wanted to eat his baby’s placenta and umbilical cord when she was born?

  Later, he tried to say he was just kidding around but I think that was only because the press caught on that every time he said it, Katie Holmes was seen sticking her formerly Catholic finger down her throat and going, “Ewwww, nasty!”

  Brit, she’s just a regular girl like you, at heart. You can take the girl out of a dingy Ohio town, force her to have a Scientology-style “silent birth,” and even make her have six inches sawed off her ankles so she’ll be shorter than you, but she’s still going to believe certain things are gross.