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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