Is my tiara on straight?

This weekend I was able to attend my very first live beauty pageant. What an eye-opening experience. Let me just start by telling you that I have never seen so many sequins in my whole life. It was all very sparkly and shiny.

One thing that surprised me is that they still do the swimsuit portion. I was pretty sure that feminists had put an end to that a long time ago but I was wrong. Those girls were very brave, though, and put on their tiny, tiny swimsuits and their very high heels and teetered around the stage like they were supposed to. I'm still shaking my head just thinking about it. You could not pay me enough to put on high heels and a swimsuit and walk around in front of an auditorium full of people. A swimsuit and Ugg boots? Maybe.

Another thing that surprised me was the talent part. To me, talent is something that not everyone else could do. I think it you want to be a beauty queen, you need to have a real talent. Like dancing or baton twirling or playing the bagpipes. In this pageant there were 15 contestants. And 11 of them sang as their talent. I use the word talent here loosely. It was almost like some of them must have thought, "Oh, crap – I don't really have a talent. I guess I'll just pretend I can sing and hope no one notices that I can't."

And the question and answer part…wow. Those girls seemed completely caught off guard by questions like, "If you could live in any other state, which would you choose and why?" Um, I can think of about 49 answers to this that might have worked but the girl who got that question said, "I don't really have an answer to that. But I guess maybe Florida." That was her whole answer. She should have just gone with "World peace."

As I sat there listening and watching, I decided that perhaps I should start a pageant. I could call it "Mrs. 30-Something." We could have talents like cooking macaroni and cheese WHILE breastfeeding or getting two kids ready for church in under three hours. And we could even have platforms like "Cellulite Awareness" and "Varicose Vein Prevention." Now THAT would be a pageant worth watching.