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Honey Boo Boo Has Grown Up Quite A Bit

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The pageant kid who once mocked pageants is now doing the cha-cha on national television.

Alana “Honey Boo Boo” Thompson was six years old when she stole scenes on “Toddlers & Tiaras” and turned “a dolla makes me holla” into a national catchphrase. Six years, one canceled series, one televised health intervention, and one rap single later, she’s a teenager navigating adolescence in front of cameras again — this time on the ballroom floor of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars: Juniors.” The journey from pageant stage to dance floor says a lot about how fast reality TV kids grow up.

• TLC abruptly canceled “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” in October 2014 after Mama June Shannon was linked to a convicted sex offender.
• Thompson and Shannon went on “The Doctors” in 2015 for an intervention focused on Thompson’s nutrition and childhood obesity risks, and Thompson released the novelty rap track “Movin’ Up” that same year.
• Partnered with junior pro Tristan Ianiero and mentored by Artem Chigvintsev, Thompson was eliminated from “Dancing with the Stars: Juniors” in Week 4 on October 28, 2018, finishing eighth.

From Toddlers & Tiaras to Cancellation

Thompson’s rise started the way a lot of unlikely reality stardom does: a scene-stealing appearance on “Toddlers & Tiaras” led TLC to build an entire spinoff around her and her family. “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo” ran for four seasons, turning June Shannon and her daughters — Lauryn “Pumpkin,” Jessica “Chubbs,” and Anna “Chickadee” — into household names alongside Thompson. That run ended abruptly in October 2014, when TLC pulled the plug after Shannon was linked to a convicted sex offender, a decision the network made with little warning to fans who’d watched the family for two years. It’s the same kind of network reckoning that would later reshape the Duggar family’s own TLC run once scandal caught up with the cameras.

The Doctors Intervention and a Rap Career

With the show gone, the family’s next major TV moment came in 2015, when Shannon and Thompson sat down on “The Doctors” for a televised intervention addressing Thompson’s nutrition and childhood obesity risks. That same year, Thompson took a swing at music, releasing the viral novelty hip-hop track “Movin’ Up” — a curiosity that spread mostly on the strength of her name recognition rather than any real chart ambitions.

Growing Up Off Camera

The years between the cancellation and her TV comeback weren’t spent entirely in the spotlight. Thompson became an aunt as her older sisters had children, started navigating teenage dating, and built out her own presence on Instagram separate from the family brand that made her famous. It’s the ordinary stuff of adolescence, just happening to a kid whose childhood had already played out on national television.

Mama June’s Transformation Brings Her Back

Thompson returned to series television in early 2017 as a main cast member on WE tv’s “Mama June: From Not to Hot,” which followed Shannon’s dramatic weight loss and the pair’s push into mother-daughter pageant competition together for the show’s second season in June 2018.

Mama June’s transformation shed roughly 300 pounds — and pulled Honey Boo Boo right back into the pageant world she’d once poked fun at as a toddler.

Taking On the Ballroom

By the fall of 2018, Thompson had swapped pageant sashes for ballroom shoes as a celebrity contestant on the inaugural season of “Dancing with the Stars: Juniors.” Paired with junior pro Tristan Ianiero and coached by Artem Chigvintsev, she worked through a run of routines that included salsa, cha-cha, foxtrot, and jazz before her elimination in Week 4 on October 28, 2018, which left her in eighth place for the season.

Eighth place in a thirteen-episode inaugural season isn’t a bad showing for a kid best known for pageant one-liners a few years earlier — it’s just one more line on a résumé that already includes a canceled TLC hit, a novelty rap single, and a mother-daughter weight-loss docuseries. Whatever comes next for Thompson, it’s a safe bet it’ll be filmed.