Mum defends decision to put daughter, 4, in Hooters outfit for beauty pageant

A mum has defended her decision to dress her four-year-old daughter in a Hooters outfit - saying it is no different from a child in a swimming costume at the beach.

Liane Dix and daughter Scarlett featured on Channel 5 programme Blinging Up Baby, which showed the mum entering her little girl into a beauty pageant wearing a miniature homemade version of a Hooters waitress outfit.

The get-up caused outcry on Twitter, with many expressing their shock and discomfort at seeing such a young child in the skimpy outfit normally worn by women at the American restaurant chain.

Lauren Broadhead tweeted: "This #BlingingUpBaby show is too much, 4yr olds in Hooters outfits?! When I was 4 I made mud pies and watched my friend eat a worm."

Emma Peach said: "Spray tans and Hooters costumes? Someone call Social Services" while @JessrobbinsUKx added "this is disgusting".

But Liane said she did not see what was wrong with the costume.

She said: "I've not been to Hooters but I know they're popular in America and it's an easy costume to make."

"I do try and be original... hopefully [the costume is] something they've not seen before."

"Some people may see it as controversial... the theme that I have chosen but at the end of the day little girls wear swimming costumes to the beach all summer and that's not a controlled environment."

Later in the programme, Scarlett was shown performing a dance routine in her outfit which included pelvic thrusts.

It comes after fellow Blinging Up Baby mum Sophie-May Dixon caused outrage by revealing she allows her daughter Princess Bliss, four, to have spray tans and pedicures.

But she said: “It’s not child abuse.

“I have spray tans and she asks if she can have a spray. There’s nothing wrong with it, I don’t understand why it’s such a big thing.

“It’s not because she needs it. It’s just dress-up. What little girl doesn’t like dressing up? I’ve not made her do it.”