World Peace

Seeing the Miss Universe pageant the other night reminded me of the days when my mother made me compete in various child beauty pageants when I was younger. I was the Jon Benet of the San Francisco Bay area!

From what little I remember, the child beauty pageant scene is exactly how it's portrayed on television and in the movies. The parents of these poor children were really pushy and I remember the other kids being yelled at as they cried. I remember the mothers being more glamorously dressed than the kids in the pageants.

I was a big winner when it came to talking to the judges because I made everyone laugh with my response in one of the first shows I was in. The guy asked me how I was feeling at that moment and I said "hungry." I didn't know about comedy and its effect on a tense competition situation, but I picked up on the fact that a candid and honest response to a question made people smile and laugh. That in turn helped me win. I made out like a bandit at those stupid shows.

There was even a swimsuit portion of the pageant, where all of the young boys wore the skimpiest little swimming trunks and were told to flex their muscles for the judges. I was getting sick of walking barefoot on a cold floor and I just wanted to go home, so I pouted as I walked down the runway like I was a frail supermodel. I did make friends with a little white boy named Paul. We played with our He-Man action figures while we were still in our swim shorts backstage in the changing area.

The glamorous world of pageantry ended when I turned six. I remember my mother taking me to one of the registration offices after days of training me to tell people that I was still five years old. She'd ask me: "how old are you?" and I'd say "five." When we got to the office, the woman at the desk asked me how old I was and I said "six." She told my mother that I was too old and I couldn't compete in that pageant. I rode home with my mother as she scolded me for not lying like I was supposed to.

I didn't see the point of beauty pageants at age five and over twenty years later, I still don't see the point. Everyone knows what goes on backstage and it's so phony. Does anyone believe the words that are coming out of their mouths during the interview? Beauty pageants are just an enormous waste of time and another way for skinny bitches to try to stick it to people who weigh more than 90 pounds. But wasn't miss Puerto Rico's dress fabulous?