Is there ever a worse time for your mother’s doctor to refuse to renew her Xanax prescription than right before your niece’s pageant? Good god, what an inconsiderate, misogynist jerk my mother has for a doctor.
Being a confused feminist, I actually carry around quite a bit of internal conflict over pageants. The parading of young adult girls around, as if they’re livestock up for auction bothers me. And what the hell does the back view of an evening gown have to do with having a brain?
My self-righteous feminist reigns superior in the auditorium…until I see my niece on the stage, and then I’m all HOLY COW, SHE’S GOTTA WIN! PLEASE LET HER WIN! PLEASE LET HER WIN!
Don’t ask me to explain how I go from bra-burning feminist to fanatic pageant groupie in less than 5 seconds. I don’t understand myself.
I also don’t understand why other past and present queens from neighboring Po-dunk City are asked to stand up and be recognized in the auditorium. My mother and I decided we’re going to wear a crown and sew up a sash so we can stand up and be recognized at the next pageant.
My mom says she’s going to buy a two-foot tall crown so that it’s bigger than any others there, but she’s always been out of touch with reality. I, though, recognize we’re in a recession and since I follow the latest trends, I know repurposing is all the rage right now. I plan to make my crown out of Ketel One bottle tops and Pixos.
My niece has been in a few pageants, so I know how nervous I get for her. I briefly thought of sneaking a flask into the auditorium to ease my nerves, but that might look like I have a drinking problem.
When they called my niece out for the impromptu questions, my nervousness was so terrible that I leaned over to ask my mom for one of her Xanax pills. While stress-relief through a swig of bourbon at a pageant would be frowned upon, somehow popping a doctor-approved pill for the same thing is socially acceptable.
Let me tell you, in the Strange Department, my vodka-cap Pixos crown has nothing on societal standards.
Unfortunately, that’s when my mother told me about her prescription issue.
But I made it! I made it through the entire pageant without a drink or pill for stress relief, and all without the first episode of nervous gas too.
My niece didn’t win, though.
We took it in stride, and the next morning, gathered in my mom’s kitchen for Sunday brunch where my mother and I dispensed our older and wiser wisdom to my niece, and discussed the higher purpose of losing the pageant.
Of course, “higher purpose” translates into us pointing out every mistake the winner made during the pageant, and how my niece had the prettiest dress in the pageant and it MUST BE RIGGED that she didn’t get at least the evening gown award!
Once we stabled our moral high horse, I then talked my niece out of becoming a veterinarian and that she could be a Vegas showgirl instead.
Clearly the feminist in me is back.
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Small po’dunk town beauty pageants all always rigged. I hate pageants…HATE THEM. Everyone here put their girls in pageants and I tell them they’re just grooming them for a life in strip club’s with the stage name “Lexi.” They don’t think that shits funny.
I will admit to being in one pageant, but it was a SCHOLARSHIP pageant…Jr. Miss….and it was socially acceptable, as no one paraded around in a bathing suit, twirled batons, or said their future goal in life was to “marry Mr. Buck Duke of the Duke tobacco fortune.” I had to actually talk about world peace and all that nonsense…LOL.
Sigh our Southern heritage is so confusing… hate the pageants, love the girls.
I could never enter my girls. I have this OCD thing that would make me turn into one of those whacked out stage parents that ends up on her own reality TV show and ends up channeling that chick from the first season of The Apprentice that everyone hated. Yeah! Omarosa!
That and I’m incredibly lazy.
Have you ever watched the show “Little Miss Perfect”?
Those mom’s are CA-RAZZY!
Oh God, you make me laugh so fucking much!
So I watch those kid pageant shows on TLC and I know I have a very unattractive look on my face because OMG, the parents!! However, I KNOW, I just know that if I was in that environment, I’d be exactly the same!
There is an uber fab, reality t.v. show about kiddie pagaents. One word: Kaleigha
FADKOG – it is like a contagious disease.
Luckily, my niece is 16 so she can say for herself whether she wants to do it or not.
As long as we don’t see you on that TLC show, Toddlers and Tiaras. I have some aversion to pageants, but maybe it is because I can barely get my girls to wash their hair or cut their nails. They’d never make it nor would I.
Sorry, the Folies closed last Saturday leaving Bally’s the only Vegas place with showgirls. You better start telling her she can grow up to become a Vegas stripper, better odds there. (and lots more money)
Oh I hate pageants. If your a grown up and want to enter fine… be a slave to the man ruled world and let them pass judgment on you. But I can not, for the life of me, understand why people dress up 4 year olds to look like hookers and parade them around for others to judge harshly. In my field of work, the big money is in pageant costumes, and I refuse to make them. I don’t care that those crazy ass moms pay 400-700+ dollars for each one. I won’t be a part of that system.
OK, stepping off the soap box now.
Missy
very funny post. It’s ridiculous that your niece didn’t win. She was obviously the best.