Insipidity and beauty pageants

Loi Landicho, now known to many in the blogosphere as the political satirist Professional Heckler, was features editor when I took the exams for apprenticeship in the UPLB Perspective, the official organ of the State University’s Los Banos campus.  The year was 1994.

 

For the features exam, Loi foisted at least two alternative topics for examinees to write about. One of the topic choices I remember vividly was Manila’s hosting of the 1994 Miss Universe beauty pageant and the controversies surrounding it. I cannot recall his exact question, but it was that pageant related topic that I chose to work on. On the spot, I scribbled down on at least five sheets of long yellow lined paper my thoughts on the highly talked-about pageant.

 

I only saw the 1994 pageant on our old malfunctioning colored television back in Albay, but having had the youthful audacity of a pageant enthusiast, I could then easily churn out important details of the event and be (pseudo)polemical about the controversies that it somehow invited. It was from factual details stored in my long-term memory that I spun out the analysis of the story. I passed the exam and became a campus journalist of some sort.

 

I was told later on by one of my senior colleagues in the paper that Loi gave me high scores for the exam (which I never confirmed anyway). I would like to believe that it was not so much my prose style that got me into campus journalism-LB style. It was perhaps the fascination for details of a freshman student that probably caught the attention of my would-be editor.

 

In hindsight, I believe it was beauty pageants that actually added texture to my otherwise boring student life and the relatively more interesting life that came after.

 

Unattractive and overbearing at times, I probably lead one of the most uninteresting lifestyles in the queer universe. But thanks to beauty pageants and the nuggets of wisdom—yes, wisdom—they have given me, I have at least been able to experience varying shades and textures of green and grey in my life journey.

 

Beauty pageants have undeniably added flavor to my personal style—whether in the teaching-learning situation or conversation with friends.

 

With their proclivity for impressive and memorable stylized performances, pageants have inspired me to be conscious that my vehicles of expression are as important as what is expressed itself. In my own terms, I had to reinvent the dated journalistic notion that one has to write and speak or communicate to express and NOT to impress. Beauty pageants have taught me that in the market place of ideas, one has to do both—to express AND impress, because victory almost always awaits those who can generate substance and fashion it in style.

 

And when I’m down and troubled and I need a helping hand…I find refuge in talking and acting and playing out anything pageant-y. Pageants are a subject of playful mimicry—whether I’m in the virtual world or the world as we know it biophysically. I sashay my way out of my shell—my study area or the university library thinking I’m a star or the reigning title holder (Of course, except for a very few distracted library habitués, nobody notices because everybody is just so busy dealing with the weight of academic work imposed on him).

 

I would also consider pageants as a semiotic resource—a lens for making sense of the world. Pageants can offer illuminating examples of how one infinitesimally small being in the infinitesimally expanding universe can make his life worth living. Isn’t it that pageants tell us to maintain our grace under pressure, display candor under harsh interrogation, adapt competently to the situation at hand, stand up when we fall (“whether on or off stage”)?

 

On the other hand, they tell us that while victory is always sweet, it is OK to lose because there is life for everybody after a debacle or a failure and that there would definitely be people who will still love you “even if the crown is no longer on your head” or hasn’t even touched your head at all.

 

And more importantly, even if there is truth to the claim that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder but some have more power to behold than others”, one can always celebrate the beauty in oneself. Because celebrating beauty is never the monopoly of the powerful few. Beauty has been has been scattered all over the universe for everyone to witness and feel and yes, play with! The littlest gestures, the slightest movements or simplest poses, the most candid utterances—those devoid of contrived profundity, which is something one would find in this prose, hahaha—they can turn perceived imperfections into something fabulously perfect! And that is beautiful.

 

At this point, it is also a welcome respite from the burden of having to write a 250-page dissertation. It makes me hopeful and excited and exuberant even on an unproductive day. Needless to say, it keeps me sane.