Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Female Eunuch in a Homemade Bikini and Other Pageant Tales


             As you all know, I used to be heavily involved in the Miss America system as a Local Director, State Judge and Trainer.  My last hurrah, if you will, was in 2011 when I was part of the team accompanying my Miss DC to Miss America.  The lovely and talented Stephanie (Williams) Dekom is a pediatrician who used her scholarship money to complete her MD at George Washington University.  We recently reconnected when we realized we both live in LA, and this time I am not referring to Lower Alabama.

                Dr. Gorgeous, her equally adorable husband and I met for dinner and the Miss LA County/Miss Culver City pageants for the Miss America system.  It’s been five years since I was involved in anything pageant-related other than watching Miss America and explaining to my friends and family why some of the winners won.  I was looking forward to experiencing the local talent which is occasionally astounding, dependably horrifying and always entertaining,

                The theatre was a wood-paneled relic of days gone by.  I felt as if we were in a finished basement waiting to join the cast of That 70s Show to play Twister.  This made sense when the Directors were introduced and out walked a couple in late, laaaaate middle age.  The wife had a unique hairstyle; an interesting combo of a Bump-It® for the front bangs, a smaller back-up Bump-It ® and a pony tail almost to her waist.  Her profile was similar to photos of the mythical Monster surfacing in The Loch Ness: bump, bump, tail.

                The contestants were an interesting mix from extremely beautiful but marginally talented future Miss USA contestants, marginally attractive but extremely talented eventual titleholders and those both marginally attractive and marginally talented, a potent combination for last place, to be sure. 

In true LA fashion, there were a couple of atypical Miss America contestants.  The first was a 4’12” young lady of Hispanic origin who came armed with white patent leather stripper heels and a rendition of Peggy Lee’s Fever that wouldn’t feel out of place at a burlesque show, with hair and make-up which would’ve won her RuPaul’s Drag Race. 

The other was the most unique contestant I’ve ever seen and I’m including the young lady I saw at a local pageant in 1992 that sang The Judd’s Grandpa and forgot the words.  This young lady who’s slicked down, parted-in-the-middle bangs made her look like Amy Farrah Fowler’s less attractive, more awkward cousin.  She was bedaubed with heavy blue eye shadow and Chapstick ® but no other attempt at make-up.  She wore pants for the on-stage question.  She seemed to have made her swimsuit at home, with bikini bottoms in a faded earth tone I called Adobe Wall and a moss green/white striped bikini top with some sort of Peter Pan collar flap thingie. 

For her talent she sang a self-composed ditty, accompanying herself on piano, energetically pounding the three chords and cleverly rhyming ‘life’ with ‘life’.  She repeated the same verse several times, singing in a British accent not unlike Audrey Hepburn’s “Flars fer sayul” in My Fair Lady.  At no other point in the pageant did she have an accent of any sort other than Disinterested Scientist, which is what I posited to my companions.  I feel fairly certain this contestant is, at present, putting the finishing touches on a Psychology, Anthropology or Feminist Studies research paper or a missive on gender norms, feminism and the American Beauty Pageant, entitled something like, Female Eunuch in a Homemade Bikini, that is simply begging to be performed at a Slam Poetry reading by a off-duty Barista in a tattered Sleater-Kinney t-shirt, reeking of ennui and electronic cigarettes.

Other contestants were reasonably talented except for some of the singers.  Is it a national rule now that someone has to sing “Don’t Rain on My Parade” every beauty pageant?  This one had two, neither who had anywhere near the singing chops to belt a song that is meant to be belted.  And if you’re going to sing Sia’s “Titanium” and you can’t hit the high notes, you should choose a different song.  You should not suddenly sing in a lower register sounding like Barry White in the throes of puberty. 

Dramatic monologues are a mixed bag.  When I judged Miss Arizona in 2009, there was a contestant who did scenes from Les Miserables and was awarded 1st Runner-up because she was a talented actress.  At this pageant a contestant did scenes from the movie Clueless.  Yes, you read that correctly. 

The winners were predicted by our little group:   Intelligent-Sorta-Pretty-Like-Meryl-Streep-Piano-Player and Pageant-Ready-Adele-Lite-Diva-in-a-Catsuit.  They will do well at Miss California, although Adele-Lite had a monstrously confusing evening gown which looked like something Ursula the Sea Witch would have worn to Prom had she been on land and enrolled in Jenny Craig. 

In other words, the pageant was awesomeness abounding and I can’t wait for the next one.

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