Wednesday, November 26, 2008

The Bold and the Beautiful

I've said this before but it doesn't seem to have flushed the rats out yet so here we go again. I'm seriously pissed at all those snoops who regularly invade my blogspace but don't bother to leave a courtesy note. Even just a little line saying Hello I was here, nice blog you have here or whatever. So to those furtive lurkers from Apia, Samoa, Singapore and Calcutta, West Bengal, whoever you are, either step forward and introduce yourselves or quit spying on me.

On to happier things, ever been on the panel of a beauty pageant? Ok, so beauty pageants aren't quite politically correct anymore but the enthusiasm they generate is still enormous. Especially at the undergrad level. And especially among the male population of said level.


At work, we have these little pageants as part of the annual sports and socio cultural fests and I've been on the panel for the third year running. Not exactly all fun and games as you might suppose. There's usually a great deal of planning and coordination that goes on behind the scenes. The girls practise catwalking and general deportment and are made to watch videos of past year competitions. And then of course, there's the little prerequisite that not very many beauty queen hopefuls enjoy - the interview round.

The first time I was a judge, the three of us on the panel, all female by the way, hadn't been told about it in advance. At the last minute, we were just told we had to ask a question of each contestant. Whoa, thinking up intelligent but not too taxing, things to ask at such short notice and in front of a very interested audience is not exactly a picnic at the park. All I could think of was What's your favourite colour. Naaaw, my two agitated co-judges said, something a little more complex. Another colleague sitting with us had obviously watched a few more pageants on TV and was able to come up with a little more happening questions. Like which person do you admire most and why. We ordered her to write out good questions to ask while we assessed the girls who'd already begun nervously sashaying up and down the stage.

Last year, the problem was solved with a list of questions already neatly printed out for us. All we had to do was pick them off the list. The girls too had already been made acquainted with the list so they knew what to expect and were able to sound considerably more intelligent and much more composed than the previous year's batch, poor things.

This year, the interview round was simplified even further to soothe the jittery nerves of the girls by informing them, albeit just a half hour or so before the event, which question in the list they were to answer. Question #1 would go to contestant #1, and so on. All they had to worry about now was prettifying themselves and pirouetting around confidently. Which they did beautifully. Salut, here's looking at you, kids!


16 comments:

  1. oh wow, you get visitors from Apia & Samoa?? haha, that's quite funny.
    looks like you got some secret admirers, J.

    *wink

    ReplyDelete
  2. yeah, a lot of secret and not so secret admirers ;)
    and more pics would have been nice... :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey what happens if some of us visit your blog more than once a day but do not leave a comment because we have done so already? That would skew your blog's stats towards non contributors. So just chillax!

    Apia, Western Samoa eh? I once knew someone there. He said it was not much fun so he and his friends used to go over to American Samoa for fun. So no wonder you get visitors from Apia. Those poor souls don't have much fun despite being one of those paradise South Pacific islands. So have a heart if they snoop on you!!

    I didn't know that beauty pageant contestants were given the questions in advance. I was always under the impression that they answered everything on the fly. Whoa! You let the cat out of the bag.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Loch and anneL, helloooo I'm talking about common good manners here, not the lack of fun or the lack of a life where ever. Spying or prying furtively on people is bad bad bad. And it's not my idea of admiration, just the opposite, in fact.

    Hey Loch woops, now you all know. Hmmm wonder if this means I get kicked out of the charmed beauty circle?

    ReplyDelete
  5. Plats, I would've gladly put up more pics except that since I was busy assessing the girls, I put my cam in someone else's hands and he didn't turn out to be a very good photographer. A friend who took pics on her cam also accidentally deleted all of them later at home :(

    ReplyDelete
  6. t must be fun judging a beauty contest. So what questions did you finally ask? Did your contestants aspire and vow to "make the world a better place," "work for the poor" "stop injustice" etc etc.....??

    ReplyDelete
  7. LOL nah they're not that wildly ambitious, ambs. We feed them tame stuff like what they think of the college t-shirt, is it ok for students to get into serious relationships, etc etc, nothing earthshaking at all.

    ReplyDelete
  8. hehe.
    this is priceless. But you did let the cat out of the bag. I was made to judge one the year before last during Varsity Week. I don't think the questions "leaked out" that time, but then their responses made one almost wish that they had been informed of the questions beforehand. Which is why, i guess our Varsity Queens that year was not a typical raving beauty, but was quite articulate.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hey, maybe questions get leaked or pre-arranged at those big international pageants too because how else would those long limbed, dewy-skinned, gorgeous young girls get to sound so articulate and intelligent too, huh? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey are you presuming that beauty and brains are mutually exclusive? Seems to me that there are more girls who are bold, beautiful and brainy to boot than so called dumb blondes. More power to them.....er........to the members of the opposite sex!!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Kekawr ha tite deuh hi an thluak a thawl duh an tih leh tawh tlat pek chu

    ReplyDelete
  12. To judge a beauty contest! I'd die! haha I have no idea at all when it comes to beauty pageants, but it sure looks like fun!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Jerusha, I once had to judge a singing compete too, and for a non-singer, not even a bathroom singer hopeful, that was just unbelievably funny! But we had certain guidelines and that helped. Ditto with the beauty pageant. Eventually though, it all boiled down to who we thought looked/walked/talked best. Lots of fun

    lal duls, nang eng ang kekawr nge i hak ve thin a?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Loch, I know you're trying to drag me into a debate there and I refuse to get into it! Dumb beauties or brainy ones, let me just quote Keats who said, "A thing of beauty is a joy forever." Nuff said.

    ReplyDelete
  15. just to let u know i was here and it was fun reading your blog and i am definitely not from samoa but close...

    joy

    ReplyDelete
  16. Now that's the kind of visitor I like :) Thank you so much for leaving a calling card, Joy. Glad you had fun. Do drop by again.

    ReplyDelete