Last updated: 11:00 am
September 5, 2008
Posted: 2:19 am
September 5, 2008
IT might have become one of the most notorious documentaries in the annals of cable TV even if JonBenet Ramsey had not been murdered coincidentally five days after the film's US TV premiere.
But the shocking one-hour film, "Painted Babies," became inextricably linked with the JonBenet story when videotape surfaced of 5-year-old JonBenet cavorting in kid beauty pageants, which happened to be the very same subject covered in the documentary.
The JonBenet video aired thousands of times in the years since her unsolved murder; the documentary has also aired countless times, its eerie similarity to JonBenet's pageant experience underscored by the close resemblance of one of the children in "Painted Babies" to the murdered child.
And now, the story of the original painted babies - Brooke Breedwell (the then-5-year-old who looked so much like JonBenet) and Asia Mansur - has been updated in a new documentary called "Painted Babies at 17."
The new one premieres Sunday night at 9 on TLC, the same channel (then called The Learning Channel) where the original premiered on Dec. 21, 1996. JonBenet Ramsey's lifeless body was discovered in the basement of her home in Boulder, Colo., just days later on Christmas, though no one has ever discovered a link between the airing of the show and the tragic girl's murder.
In "Painted Babies at 17," Brooke says she gave up pageants at age 7, but that information might be out of date since she reports on her personal Web site, brookebreedwell.com, that she competed in Chattanooga, Tenn.'s Outstanding Teen Pageant, a stepping-stone to the Miss Tennessee Pageant, in 2006.
On the other hand, Asia, of Athens, Ga., never stopped competing. In the new "Painted Babies," she's seen participating in the Darling Dolls Beauty Pageant in 2007 in Dallas (in this particular pageant, like many others, girls in several age groups are eligible to compete).
The new, updated documentary revives all the imagery that made the original so shocking - the tiny tots made up like dolls dancing and singing in provocative costumes, while their fanatical parents and grandparents mercilessly rehearse the kids and spend thousands of dollars on wardrobes, travel and pageant lessons.
As if "Painted Babies at 17" isn't shocking enough, TLC is pairing it with another documentary, "Toddlers & Tiaras" (10 p.m. Sunday). When you see two 5-year-olds getting spray-on tans before a competition, you'll know you're being taken to a place you've never been before.
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