If you’ve listened to our second episode Beauty Pageant Blooper, you know that I survived a series of unfortunate events as a contestant in this preliminary to the Miss America pageant.  Common sense and the fact that my sorority sisters simultaneously called me “Miss Hopeless” should have alerted me to the fact that pageant sponsors were desperate for a candidate and it should not have been me. 

The idea that I or any young woman would parade on stage in a bathing suit and an evening gown and let people gawk and rate us is insane, but perhaps no nuttier than my talent choice to screech out a self-composed poem, which you can see re-produced in its screeched-out entirety at the end of the podcast, or on Instagram or Tiktok.

The only real photo I have of the event appeared in the campus newspaper: I’m wearing a bathing suit and I’m trying to smile.

I don’t think we discuss it in the episode, but the afternoon of the pageant, we were individually interviewed by the judges.  The first question one judge asked me was “How do you feel about Women’s Lib?”  Followed by “Where do you go when you want to be alone?” and “Should marijuana be legalized? 

I was talking to another judge and he said he couldn’t think of anything to say.  With what I thought was an innocent tone, I said, “Sometimes words aren’t needed,” and honest to God, as he muttered,“I guess I know where I’m not wanted,” he turned and he walked off.

I have long known my pageant experiences were wacky, but it wasn’t until I revisited this event with Hilary, that I realized the whole construct was absurd; it was wacky within wacky; I was the spectacle within a spectacle.  And that’s why the whole thing is so darn funny to me now.  I hope you’ll watch and enjoy!