Local 'Toddlers & Tiaras' Star Speaks Out

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - Meet Brandi Tutor-Brown. By outward appearance she looks like the quintessential Southern belle, but this Memphis girl has a national spotlight aimed directly at her.

For nearly all of Brandi's life she's been a pageant queen. This past summer, Brandi and her friend Lauren were chosen to appear on the nationally syndicated TLC show 'Toddlers and Tiaras.'

"There was some stuff that I was just joking with the camera man about that I wish I wouldn't have said, but you live and you learn," said Brandi. "It's 3 days worth of interviewing and you have a mic on you the whole time so they want you to let your guard down a little."

The show takes you on a journey through the lives of pint-size pageant queens. The show was made famous because of its no holds barred honesty, taking you behind the scenes of what goes into the world of adolescent pageants.

"I got a lot of ridicule after the episode came out just because people thought I was competing against children and I wasn't, I was in the married division."

Now months after Brandi's episode went off the air, she still receives the backlash of criticism and hurt filled words thrown at her from around the world.

"I got a lot of hateful e-mails, hateful blogs wrote about my character, just people from what they took from the episode, they didn't know me but they were judging what they saw."

In the end, she said those who continue to throw stones might not understand that words really do hurt.

"At first I was like, I don't want to do this anymore, I don't want to be ridiculed like this; it really destroyed me, it hurt me, I went a couple of nights when I couldn't sleep," Brandi said. "It hurts me but I'm learning to be strong and just to toughen up, and it doesn't matter if people like you it's what's inside of you and I know I'm living right."