Miss USA

I caught the highlights of the Miss USA 2005 contest today. Yeah, a bit too much of beauty pageants for me in the last few days. Need to do something manly for a change. How about sculling some beer and then belching out the alphabet? I think that might do!

The show itself was fun. But then, with 51 beautiful women attired in everything from evening gowns to bathing suits, how could it be anything else? I liked the novel idea of getting the participants themselves to ask each other questions during the final Q&A round. Each of the five finalists writes down a question on a piece of paper as does the reigning queen (beauty queen, NOT Elizabeth II) and these are then pulled out from a hat by each finalist in turn. It would have been even better if the judges also took into account the question that a finalist thought of, and not just the reply she gave to the one that she picked up. I think in some ways the questions that you ask can reveal more about you than the answers that you give. Since one of the questions asked was by the previous years winner, I'm guessing they did not take this into account.

There wasn't a lot of the clichéd "this is as much about their brains as their beauty" theme. I liked that. Let's just all admit that in such a contest beauty is far more valued than mental faculty. (I can't say I have any objection to that at all!) Another ritualistic cliché that was conspicuous by its absence was the "I would like to help the world and do all this work in Africa and blah blah" speeches! Let's keep it practical, gals! If you wanna freak out in the one year you get to bask in your glory then just say so. Don't try to score any brownie points with the "goody-goody" act!

One thing that has been around since Eve strutted her way to victory in the first ever beauty contest (which wasn't too tough since she was the only woman around to participate and Adam was the only judge!), is the typical manner in which the winner celebrates the announcement of her name. Hands fly to the mouth to stifle a gasp of utter surprise! How about some originality? Let's see you do a little dance or something. This time before the final name was announced the two possible winners (first runner-up and eventual winner) clasped each other in a tight embrace for about half a minute. I don't know what they were whispering in each other's ears, but it could have been something like -

"Hey bitch, you win and I'll beat the shit outta you later!"

"Don't worry, bitch! I already bet like a million dollars against my name. I sincerely do hope you win!"

(I couldn't think of any female derogatory term other than 'bitch'!)

When the eventual name was announced, it was done in the following manner - "And the First Runner-up Miss USA 2005 is ... " Apparently, though, the lass who's name was then called out thought the winner was being announced instead of second place. Thus for half a second we had both girls celebrating! But it was quickly ended when the host then followed it up with - "And so Miss USA 2005 is ... " (customary hand-to-mouth-gasp-stifle)

Just for the record, I've already forgotten who actually won it! But I think it was Miss North Carolina over Miss California over Miss Kentucky!