Queen for a Day
In Texas, beauty contests offer girls a time-honored occasion to hone the skills of elaborate preening, discover the intricacies of tactical warfare, and practice the fine art of intense mother-daughter bonding. But at the 2003 Miss Texas Teen USA pageant, contestant number 53 hoped for something simpler: a blueprint for self-discovery.
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Outside the conference room, the contestants, who had the glossy appearance of television anchorwomen, waited their turn. Inside, they each stood stiffly before the judges, wearing pin-striped power suits and bright-red blazers, trying to make an impression in their allotted three minutes. Miss Permian Basin demonstrated how she could touch her nose with the tip of her tongue, and Miss Orange County showed off her skills as an auctioneer by pretending to sell the lectern she stood behind. ("Do I hear one dollar, one dollar, one dollar? Do I hear one-fifty?") Other girls would have made their chambers of commerce proud. "I'm from Texarkana, and we say we're twice as nice, because we straddle the state line!" gushed Miss Bowie County. Or they offered up colorful sayings: "My brother and I are so close that if he eats a watermelon, I spit out the seeds," said Miss Tom Green County. The girls' voices quavered, and some wore their uncertainty for all to see. "How did you prepare for this pageant?" a judge asked Miss Bayview. She sighed, then said, "I tried to find who I am, and I found it, I guess."
Just before noon, Ashley stepped up to the lectern. She wore a flattering red dress, lipstick, and flats. She did not appear to be the same vibrant girl who had laughed the night before as the pageant unfolded around her; she looked as if she had lost her nerve. "I'm number fifty-three, my name is Ashley Swanson, and I'm Miss Gray County Teen USA," she said with a wan smile.
"Hello, Ashley. Where's Gray County?"
"The Panhandle."
"So it's cold?"
"Yes."
"Where do you live in Gray County?"
"Pampa. It's not very big, but it's homey."
"What would make us want to visit?"
"Um . . ." Ashley looked stumped.
"Is there a mall?"
"Yes, but there's nothing in it."
"How do you like the pageant?"
"It's different. I don't usually dress up." Ashley searched for something positive to say. "I'm very shy, but it's helping me to get up in front of people and talk." She did not tell the judges that she planned to major in planetary geoscience when she went to college or that she loved the way the sun caught the rough edges of a rock when she held it in her hand. Instead, Ashley murmured a few more answers, and then her time was up.
Not far behind her was Miss Houston, Tye Felan, perfectly turned out in a champagne-colored silk suit, her hair falling in soft blond ringlets around her face. Tye was beautiful in a way that needed no adornment, with porcelain skin, blue eyes, a tiny waist, and a willowy dancer's body. A devout Baptist, Tye could say things like "I think God put me on this earth to do the things I'm doing. I need to stay true to myself and to Him," and when she said them, you believed her; she was without guile. Before the judges, she was a model beauty queen. She spoke about her lifelong dream of becoming a country singer like her idol, Faith Hill. She praised the many charms of Houston, and she spoke of her firm commitment to abstinence. "I'm very loyal and honest, and everything I do, I give one hundred ten percent," Tye said, as the judges beamed back at her. "I've learned that anything is possible."
Her rival, Bria Wall, made an equally lasting impression. While other girls had hung back, Bria walked up to each judge, extended her hand, and said, "Hello, I'm Bria Wall!" Rather than waiting to field a question once she returned to the lectern, she smiled and asked the judges, "How are you doing today?" Bria was two years younger than Tye and several inches shorter; while Tye was the elegant beauty, Bria was her cute kid sister. With a giddy enthusiasm, Bria described herself as a "daughter, friend, student, and community servant." Of her future, she said, "I want to live my life so that when I look at myself in the mirror, I'll know I haven't done anything I'm ashamed of." When she was asked what she would want if she could have one thing made of gold, she replied without hesitation, "The Miss Texas Teen USA necklace, to be honest!" Other girls had looked relieved when their three minutes had drawn to a close, but Bria seemed reluctant to go. When her time was up, she leaned forward and whispered, "It was great to meet y'all!"
THAT NIGHT, TWO HOURS BEFORE the "preliminary show and competition" was slated to begin, I spotted Ashley standing outside of rehearsal. She was in a jubilant mood. "Look!" she said. She had on mascara and black eyeliner—she was no longer wearing her glasses—and her hair was rolled up in a constellation of curlers. "So this girl in a pink-and-black shimmery suit grabs me after lunch and says, ŒYou're coming with me,'" Ashley explained. "We're walking really fast down the hall, and she says, ŒMy name is Alexis,' and she says that three times. She's Miss Coastal Bend. She said her makeup artist wanted to give me a makeover for free! I'm going up there so she can finish working on me. You can come watch, if you want." We made our way to room 322, where a piece of paper was taped to the door that said, "Makeup room. Come on in." Inside, under the high-wattage bulbs designed to reproduce the brilliance of stage lights, sat half a dozen teenage girls in robes, studying their reflections. Three women stood over them, applying powder to noses and blow-drying hair and spraying clouds of Aqua Net. One of the makeup artists was Nicole West, a short, stylish woman in her thirties who had never seen a face that could not be improved. When I later asked Nicole why she had decided to waive her fee for Ashley—the going rate was $300 per day or $600 for the entire pageant—Nicole described first seeing her at the dance rehearsal the previous afternoon. "I thought, ŒWhy does this girl have her glasses on?'" Nicole said. "ŒWhy does she have her chin down?' I looked at her and I thought, ŒI've been that girl before.' We've all been that girl before. Ashley's a beautiful girl; she just needed some help. I mean, she came here because of a postcard. When she told me that, I thought, ŒMan, you got guts.'"
Ashley sat next to a vast palate of cosmetics, and Nicole went to work. Her hair, which had hung flat before, was unfurled from the rollers and brushed out into lavish waves that framed her face. The contours of her cheekbones were accentuated with rouge so that her fine bone structure became more pronounced. Her lips were painted a russet color and lined to look fuller. Her eyes were fringed with false eyelashes. Her eyelids were dusted with rust and gold, which drew out the greenness of her eyes. All told, the transformation took close to an hour. When Ashley rose from the chair and assessed herself in the mirror, she held her shoulders back just a bit farther. Her face radiated a new vitality, as if she were suddenly in sharper focus. Everyone in the room gathered around her to look, creating a chorus of breathless compliments.
"You look awesome!"
"Holy crap!"
"I have goose bumps, Ashley. You're a raving beauty."
"Are your parents religious? They're going to sue us!"
Ashley smiled, and then it was time to go.
"Keep smiling!" said Nicole, who looked as if she might cry.
Downstairs in the dressing room, the girls assembled for the preliminary competition. The judges would score them in swimsuit and evening gown that night; those numbers would be added to the personal interview score from earlier that day (each event counted for one third of the total score), and girls would be ranked accordingly. The top fifteen would be announced the next day, at the beginning of the final competition. Backstage at the preliminary, heads turned when Ashley walked into the dressing room, and a group of girls had soon gathered around her to exclaim over her appearance: "You look gorgeous, Ashley!" "Oh, my gosh!" "Wait, we need to take a picture together!" ("It's interesting," Ashley told me later. "Once I had makeup on, everybody wanted to be my new best friend.") One girl jokingly accused her of having used her glasses as a ruse so that she could upstage the other girls at the last minute. The chaperones stood nearby, marveling. "Honey, you look magnificent," said Mrs. Buchanan, pinching her arm.
A few hours later, each of the Miss Texas Teen USA contestants walked across the stage in two-piece bathing suits—girls who were thick-waisted, slim-hipped, flat-chested, long-limbed, jiggly where they were supposed to be, jiggly where they weren't, gangly, pear-shaped, curvaceous, and every other variation of the female form. For some girls—girls whose breasts were not big enough, their stomachs not flat enough, their thighs not toned enough—the minute-long walk down the red carpet was likely the longest walk of their lives. The audience cheered, even whistled, for some contestants; for others, there was only awkward silence. Meanwhile, the judges—five men and four women—scrutinized each girl's figure, making notations. The swimsuit competition may have been the pageant's cruelest moment, trying to turn teenage girls prematurely into women, but it was also its most honest. Beauty—or the judges' idea of beauty—was assessed and scored without sentimentality.
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