beauty queen

Lately I’ve been noticing pageants.  I saw Miss USA – who is/was Miss Texas – on the Today show.  There’s a pageant reality show, or was that Miss USA?  I wouldn’t know.  There was a mother/daughter pageant reality show also.  I remember thinking that was had to be the 18th, 19th, and 20th levels of Hell rolled into one hour of purgatory.  I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that my Ma thought of me as competition (mostly likely resultant from the on-going power struggles throughout my growing up), so if our sorry asses were shamboozled onto that Hell Show, something pent up would be released.  And it wouldn’t be a fart.  Well, considering it’s me I’m talking about, yea, it would.

And then there was this story I read about potential Miss England, Chloe Marshall.  Oh the controversy, she’s a size16 – UK standards, which is approximately 14 here in ever-so svelte USA.

I remember seeing the commercials for the pageant reality show – which may or may not have actually been the Miss USA contest, and saying to the Man “I’m gonna do that next year.”  First, I asked him how old he thought they were, because I didn’t want to be the oldest one up there.  Like that would be an issue.  Me.  5’2 on stage, looking like a hobbit in real-people land.  And I’m worried about being old. 

I was thinking about Miss USA and (potential) Miss England and how far apart they are on the pendulum of beauty queens.  After exhausting that train of thought, (that consisted of “Wow.  Their different.”) I had to consider ‘beauty pageants.’ 

I guess I have always assumed, perhaps incorrectly, but an assumption nonetheless, that a beauty pageant was exemplifying the perfect female.  Physically, the most obvious, but these contests also have other standards – humanitarian efforts, academics, how good you look in an evening gown because women are trophies to marry rich men and attend philanthropic events.  Wait.  Sorry, tangent.  Ironically, Miss USA differs from Miss America (I KNOW!  They aren’t the same!) in that Miss USA does NOT have a talent event.  Huh. 

Returning to my original chain of thought, assuming that Miss USA is exemplifying the perfect female, I’m a little, uh grossed out.  She’s all hard planes and obvious muscles and pointy angles and boobs that defy gravity.  Or those may be pectoral muscles, oops.  Where does that leave men?  ‘Cause in my eyes, the male species were supposed to be chiseled, and muscled and have high, perky boobs pects. 

What about the so-called ‘real’ women?  They are closer to (potential) Miss England than Miss USA.  With the exception of height, but seriously, why must beauty queens/Dallas Cheerleaders/models be over 5’8?  Most of the men I know don’t want to look UP to their woman.  And that’s not a normal height.  Every woman I see over 5’8 I stare at.  Sometimes I point.  Usually I make a comment like “I’m glad I’m not freakishly tall.”  And it’s deserved.  They shoulda stopped growing inches ago.

I’m secure enough in myself to be able to appreciate the female form.  I’ve understood it to be the softer form.  Not stark and cold like granite, but warm and soft and smooth.  Like (potential) Miss England.  Which is not be understood as me saying ladies should pack on the pounds, because being healthy is more important than pant size.  But (potential) Miss England has a waist, and real boobs and thighs.  And hips, did you see her hips?  Big hips, cushy hips.  If I was a man, those would be the hips I’d want to attach myself to.  Without insult, those are child-bearing hips, and isn’t that what hips are made for?  Childbearing?  That makes them fundamentally female.  That leads me to believe, to be the ideal female form, you need a pair of hips.  But Miss USA has two jutting, bony structures that serve to hold up her bikini bottoms, they don’t even create a waist.  Can she squeeze a child through those things?  Hell no.  Her waist is the size of my little-person thigh.  If it wasn’t for the added boobs, you mistake her for a real tall prepubescent boy with long hair.

The female form is meant to be touched (with the expressed consent of such a female) and caressed.  It should be a body that hands want to linger on.  I don’t want to touch Miss USA, if not for the fact that my hands would be coated with enough baby oil to warrant the use of degreaser, then for the fact that she has a highly uncomforting looking body.  I don’t wanna roll over in bed during the night to that, her elbow’d poke an eye out.  I don’t want a hug form a pair of outstretched boney arms attached to a rib cage, with suspended lumps of silicone.  Or slide my hands down her back, feeling every vertebrae like I’m playing a xylophone.  Or rest my head on a clavicle attached to a shone joint.  The female body should have some cushion to soothe, some give to a body. 

Despite being a good 8” shorter than either of those Amazonian beauty queens, I think I need to become a contestant.  I got hips.  Childbearin’ ones.  And real boobs.  And thighs.  I’ve got a tummy, a waist and I jiggle.  I think women should jiggle. 

I’m gonna have to work on my model pose face, that one’s one too flattering.