Queens

Imelda Marcos, Sarah Palin, Anita Bryant, Oprah Winfrey. Diane Sawyer, Cloris Leachman. All beauty pageant contestants and winners -- the profane and laughably idiotic to the fabulously talented.

I’d love to write off all contestants as unevolved slaves to the patriarchy -- sad souls who are misguidedly selling themselves on their looks alone. Few things in life are so black and white though.

Wait a minute -- you say the contests are about talent too?
This a world where free style roller skating, rifle twirling and jumping rope are considered remarkable. The most common talents on display are singing and dancing.

And then there's the interview portion of the entertainment.
What are your strengths?
What are your weaknesses?

Standard job interview questions so I suppose it gets some of them prepared for the post bikini-on-catwalk life.

I found these tips on how to answer the question ‘who is your role model’ on line and NO, I didn’t find these ‘tips’ on The Onion:

Who is your role model?
My role model is me, because for me everyday is an endeavor to do better than yesterday.

Who is your role model and why?
I always had been a great admirer of Lady Diana and would like to make the mark that women can achieve what their male counterparts can better do.

The hell? The first answer demonstrates a full on lack of understanding of what a role model actually is. The second answer -- is this how Caribou Barbie learned how to speak? Is her word salad syntax just beauty pageant style palaver (signifying nothing -- duh)?

Amongst all the empty heads, the women who’s only achievement in this life was winning the Lucky Egg and Sperm Olympics there are some with true skills, talents and smarts. My guess is that they’re solidly in the minority though. For every Oprah there’s thousands of dimwitted Lauren Ashleys and Carrie Prejeans. Vacuous, moral-free, Mean Girls on the grift.

Back in my freshman year of college (just before dirt was invented -- yeah, 1976), a fellow music major (we were both flautists) proudly told me, when we were talking about what we did before coming to college, that she’d been Miss Pennsylvania Junior Miss. I was absolutely stunned -- it completely colored my opinion of her. Afterward I noticed every cowtow and capitulation to the boys around us, each unquestioning acceptance of an authority figure’s edicts, all the shy smiles and giggles when upperclassmen paid attention to her.

I asked her why she did it.  Scholarship money. The state college I went to didn’t attract anyone who could afford or had the talent for a Julliard, Oberlin or Curtis. I understood. Tuition, books, board and musical instruments couldn’t be fully paid by the usual after school jobs of waiting tables, selling candy at the Manos Theater or delivering newspapers.

Still -- that’s quite a gamble. Just entering the contest doesn’t guarantee you’ll win the big scholarship buckos.

I found this interesting post by Rae Carson, a young woman who’s now a YA author (The Girl of Fire and Thorns):

True confession: I competed in beauty pageants. Excuse me, scholarship programs.
I really did need tuition money. I had just graduated with a B.A. in Social Science—which qualified me for the management track at McDonalds—and I was flailing. College had not made all my dreams come true, I had a mountain of debt, and I still had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I thought if I parked myself in an MFA program, I could stave off adulthood and poke at the idea of becoming a writer. I saw pageants as a bedazzled meal ticket to grad school.
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So when I tell people that competing in pageants set me on the road toward feminism and body acceptance, I don’t mean it in a way that is critical of pageants. (Though there is much to criticize.) What I mean is that, in a time when I was lacking purpose and confidence, pageants provided a way for me to explore my own personal power.

Go read the whole post. It’s worth it.

I had a real mind blowing after moving up here to Boston and got to be close buds with a bunch of MIT students. Their summer make-the-tuition-dough gigs? Computer programming, research drones in the Brain and Cognitive Science Lab, Cyber Test Support Team Member. Sure, sure, not all MIT summer jobs are so cool (and high paying) --  there are dorm monitors and library helpers too.

Too bad the ultra interesting paths aren’t available to those of us with more humble brain power.

Being in a beauty pageant isn’t the same as being a stripper or a hooker (or, as is so often the case, a stripper who hooks) or a porn actress/model. It does seem, to me anyway, the socially accepted form of those. Pageants reduce women’s worth to their looks. All the other foofarah is just window dressing.

Harsh? Yeah but that’s how reality rolls.

If my Helen or one of my GRANDnieces (oy!) wanted to enter a pageant, I wouldn’t pitch an 'OH NO YOU'RE NOT!' fit. I would however want to have long conversations with them. I’d want to understand why they might want to go that route. I'd want to explore, with them, whether there might be viable, exciting, less vilely exploiting alternatives.

There are more opportunities for young women now than there were when Oprah, Diane and Cloris were walking those pageant catwalks.

Thank Kali.