Me? Watching a Beauty Pageant?

By Darlene Gardner

Beauty pageants are not my family’s thing. As a group, we’re into sports and a disproportionate number of us are crazy about books and dead rock stars. Pageants are especially not my thing. I don’t believe I’ve even watched one on television since maybe sometime in the 1970s.

For those reasons, it was a bit surreal to find myself on a recent weekend almost three hundred miles from home sitting in the Hyatt Regency ballroom at the Miss Pennsylvania USA pageant. My niece Marlee, a pageant novice, was a contestant.

Let me preface this by saying that Marlee (pictured above and at left) is beautiful on the inside. Once, when a brawl seemed inevitable at the hospital psych ward where she works, she provided a distraction by leaping up on a table and breaking into Elvis songs. She’s a longtime volunteer at a summer camp for children with mental disabilities. And -- I can’t forget this one -- a Superromance fan. As you can see from the accompanying photos, she’s also lovely on the outside.

It turns out there are a lot of good-looking girls in Pennsylvania, the state where I grew up. More than a hundred of them walked the runway in bathing suits and evening gowns during pageant weekend, with smiles so wide my cheeks hurt. Trust me, that’s a lot of girls to watch strut their stuff. Especially because the Miss Pennsylvania pageant was held in tandem with the Miss Pennsylvania Teen competition, doubling the number of young women vying for tiaras.

As someone who doesn’t put a premium on beauty, I wondered about the motivation of all those contestants. Marlee entered on a lark to see if doing well in the pageant would open any doors. She’s been modeling since she was a child and has appeared in dozens of print ads, some commercials, a couple music videos and as an extra in a few movies. But what about those other girls? Didn’t any of them secretly wish they were somewhere else, such as the Pittsburgh Steelers home game that took place a few miles from the ballroom on pageant Sunday? I sure did. I spent part of the pageant reading text updates of the game my son was sending me. Marlee made friends with a pageant veteran who put it this way: Everybody spends their time doing something. For me, it’s pageants.

The pageant stretched over two days, with the preliminaries on Saturday and the finals on Sunday. I sat in the audience with my two sisters and mother on Sunday hoping Marlee’s name would be called as one of the top fifteen. It was. The judges’ slates were then wiped clean and the top girls repeated their runway walks. Marlee walked the stage like a pro, exuding poise and confidence. She wore the same green two-piece swimsuit and gorgeous peach-colored beaded gown as she had the day before, which I gather is a prerequisite.

Alas, she didn’t make the top five, which was heavy on repeat contestants. The winner (pictured at right), a brunette who was first runner-up in each of the last two Miss Pennsylvania USA pageants, had the most experience of all. She’s appeared in nine annual state pageants in three different states with the hopes of competing for the title of Miss USA. This was her last shot at qualifying for the national pageant before she turns twenty-seven and no longer meets the age requirements.

Pageants still aren’t my thing. I imagine I’ll never go to another as long as I live. Here’s something intriguing, though. My friends were all highly interested in my experience, even the ones who never watch pageants. Most of them asked to see a photo of Marlee. So here’s my question: What is it about beauty pageants that people find so compelling? I’ll give away a copy of The Christmas Gift, my November Superromance, to a poster chosen at random.