THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 30, 1995 TAG: 9507300043
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
The crown wasn't much, just soybeans glued to gold spray-painted cardboard.
Still, I wanted it.
But I was too gangly to try out for Queen Soya. Had skin problems. Couldn't fill out a swimsuit.
I also didn't have the right talent. I couldn't twirl a baton or work a marionette or sing ``Somewhere Over the Rainbow,'' all the favorite acts in the Midwestern farm town where I grew up. But talent, or lack of it, wasn't my main problem. Everyone knew only beauty counted in this contest.
And who cared what you did in school? Academics was the last thing on our minds those Labor Day weekends, when the queen of the Soybean Festival was crowned.
Beauty pageant officials today would have me believe things are different now, that even girls with crooked smiles can nab the tiaras.
The truth is that beauty pageants - oops, now they're called ``scholarship contests'' - are anachronisms suffering from acute identity crisis.
Organizers are dressing up pageants with words like ``achievement'' and ``community service.'' Girls must have a social cause instead of a backstage hair expert. And body measurements no longer are passed out to the press.
But isn't it weird how all the winners are still knockouts? Could it be the academic awards and volunteer work are just fig-leaf attempts to make the whole affair look legitimate?
Sure, maybe a girl can improve her chances by boning up on current events and volunteering at the local nursing home. But she better hang onto the tricks of the trade: Taping those boobs together for cleavage. Gluing swimsuits to the derriere to keep them from riding up. And applying Vaseline to teeth for that winning smile.
The masquerade of inner merit is coming back to haunt the people who stage these glitzy events.
Witness Miss Virginia, who was dethroned not for stuffing her bra, but for padding her resume. For saying she was magna cum laude when she was plain ol' cum laude, a star athlete instead of a cheerleader.
Pageant officials supported her at first, saying it was all a big misunderstanding. After all, she still has good legs. Finally, to preserve their last shred of dignity, they took back the tiara.
The successor, Amber Medlin of Virginia Beach, had to go through four days of background checks before taking over the crown: Achievements substantiated. Letters of confirmation rounded up. Proof of music awards gathered.
Good grief. Is she running for CIA director or Miss Virginia? Next they'll be taking polygraphs.
It just goes to show what happens when you take a public tape-measure to smarts, inner beauty and wholesomeness. Vanessa Williams gets deposed as Miss America for posing nude. New York State's Miss Congeniality isn't. At least according to neighbors, who pressed charges against her for running down a kid with her car.
It's gotten so complicated. Where is Queen Soya when you need her?
Ever since the women's movement started calling these contests demeaning to females, organizers have tried to distance the pageants from the concept they were built on: Beauty.
Instead of dropping the affairs altogether, officials try to measure qualities that shouldn't be ranked in the first place.
Let's keep scholarship contests where they belong - at universities, not lighted stroll ways. by CNB