I’ll admit it. I have a small fetish for watching documentaries about childhood beauty pageants. Some might speculate that it’s because of my background as a Women’s Studies major, surely the idea of little girls being dressed and tressed and painted to such extremes stirs the deep roots of feminism in my psyche.
Others might note that I’m old enough to remember the Jon Benet Ramsey case. Though the beauty pageant circuit had nothing to do with her murder (that we know about) we were all a little bit shocked and a little bit confused by the heights to which a young girl’s blonde hair could be teased.
But while both those explanations sound reasonable, and though I wish I could claim one or both equally, I’m afraid I have something to confess.
This will no doubt surprise many who know me, and even more who know what I look like.
I was once a childhood beauty pageant queen.
I’ll give you a moment to process.
It started on a sunny day in New Orleans when my parents took me to the Hell Divers Rodeo. The Hell Divers are a spearfishing group based out of southern Louisiana. They go out to the Oil and Natural Gas rigs and shoot snapper, jack, and cobia and every year they have a fishing competition with a big party at the end. At that age, I couldn’t really tell the difference between Jazz Fest and a fish weigh-in: both were loud with lots of people I didn’t know. Thus, I don’t really remember how or why I was entered in the pageant–I remember there were two other girls, late teens or early 20s, there in swimsuits.
My own swim ensemble was a stunning navy blue with a white stripe with a small tulip near my right hip.
I won.
The way my mother puts it, the judges were faced with picking between two relatively identical young women and since there were only two of them, it’s a lot like picking ‘winner’ and ‘first loser’. What’s a poor judge to do? Give it to the four year old.
My ‘duties’ included handing out the trophies to the winners of the various fish categories but since the trophies were bigger than I was, and I had the attention span of a neurotic sparrow, I spent the afternoon running back and forth between the stage and where my parents were sitting on the grass.
I did not return the following year to defend my crown. Speaking of, where is my crown? I have a plaque:
but no glittering, glitzy semi-circle of plastic and sparklies. And I feel a little sad about that. All these other girls: toddlers and preteens, they get crowns and sashes and trophies and $5000 cash. I was the queen of effing spear fishermen. My domain was the ocean! Where is my golden trident of magical powers?
My experience with the circuit, as it were, did not end in New Orleans. I moved on to the Eastern Hunter Association–braiding and prancing my way across the eastern half of North Carolina–on horseback. I wasn’t particularly good, or successful. I did get a lot of ribbons though–which happens when you’re in a group of a half dozen and they award through sixth place.
The advantage though, with horseback riding over swimsuit + evening + talent is that if you lose, it’s partly the horse’s fault. I mean, it’s still my fault for not getting the horse to do what he’s supposed to do, but at least I lost points because the horse did an extra half stride on the outside jumps and not because my face looked puffy. And when you’re feeling bitter, you can blame the horse. And sometimes that blame is even deserved. Imagine if Miss America had to convince her dress that it wanted to go out on stage with her–and at any moment it could throw her out of it and run back to the closet.
Well, then they probably would have fewer ratings problems among certain key demographics.
When I started watching these episodes, I admit I felt smug and snide towards these parents.
“They’re learning important life lessons,” they all say. “When she wants to quit, she can quit. It’s her decision.”
Sure, I thought to myself. “Her” decision. That’s why you bleach your eleven year old’s teeth and make her vacuum your living room while in heels so that she can learn to walk more gracefully in those stripper stilettos. Only, don’t they have a little bit of a point? If pageants really are all about presence and grace and personality and acting bubbly and adorable no matter what you’ve got balanced on your head, won’t that serve you later in life? I don’t think an ability to apply liquid mascara is necessarily on the entrance exams of colleges, but it’s not like I was asked to do a flying lead change to get into law school.
Many of the outfits and “dance moves” are incredibly inappropriate according to my sensibilities, but it probably evolved over time as each parent tried to outdo and outbubble all the other kids.
What’s hysterical is to hear each Mom say “I never thought I’d do pageants–I thought those pageant moms, they were all crazy. If it were up to me, I wouldn’t do the the flippers and the glitz and the heavy hair pieces, but you have to in order to compete.”
I think if every Mom actually believed this, they could probably institute some rules. Well, except in that one run by the woman who likes all that crap because “it shows the lengths to which these girls will go to show off their beauty.”
Whatever. I may not spray tan, but I’m still empress of the seven seas.
