Synopsis: In the movie, Lauren , a high school senior, is over the moon when she receives her acceptance letter to her dream university, marking a major step toward her lifelong goal of becoming a doctor. But that excitement quickly fades as she and her parents, including mom, Julie, face the harsh reality of tuition costs. In hopes of winning scholarship money, Lauren makes a decision that goes against everything she promised herself as a child—she enters the same beauty pageant her mother once dominated in her youth. While Julie is eager to relive the glory of her own pageant days and share one last bonding experience with her daughter, Lauren is thrust into a dark, toxic world of cutthroat competition and psychological manipulation, all hidden behind bleached white smiles and rhinestone gowns. Too preoccupied with the pageant, Lauren doesn’t realize that her best friend Rae (Kaci Barker) is falling seriously ill with a potentially deadly but vaccine-preventable disease — meningitis B – prompting her to turn the pageant platform into a tool for awareness and education.
The film emphasizes the importance of proactive conversations between parents of teens and their teen’s doctor, empowering them to “ask to be sure” about meningitis vaccination against all five vaccine preventable groups of meningitis, A, B, C, W and Y. The film aims to alert moms that while many teens have received vaccination against serogroups A, C, W, and Y, many may be missing vaccination for meningitis B. (Courtesy Lifetime, 2025)
The Cast:
Production Credits:
Pretty Hurts is produced by Singer/White Entertainment and Swirl Films for Lifetime, brought to you by GSK. Executive Producers include Sheri Singer from Singer/White Entertainment and Eric Tomosunas from Swirl Films. Brian Herzlinger directs from a script from Lydia Genner.
Premiere Date:
It premiered Saturday, June 28th, 2025 on Lifetime
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