Full-Time Pageant Queen

Back in for the running of pageanting, and it seems so different this time around. It’s nearly as if it’s become a way of life rather than a huge event that I have to spend all of my time preparing. Nearly like work. From searching for dresses, gaining ideas for the National Costume (don’t ask), working out for “my” perfect body, volunteering and attempting to make appearances whenever I have a free moment, it has become so time consuming and draining. I wish it was a full-time job where I could actually get paid.

This in turn made me wonder, what do girls do as full-time pageant queens? What do they do with their lives afterwards if they had no real goals? Kenya Moore has made her claim to fame on the Real Housewives of Atlanta solely from her Miss USA title and used it to course the rest of her socialite career. However, how do you get to that point of being a professional pageant queen where the title and reign carries you into celebrity-status? Not that this is what I desire in life, but…there’s just so much work. How do they have time to focus on anything else?

While watching Miss USA on Sunday night and looking at the pool of women I had the opportunity to compete against this past year, it was exciting and so cool for the fact that that could’ve been me on national television simply walking and gracing across the stage. However, now that that long and tiring journey is over, now what do the girls do? Prepare for the next pageant? Move forward with their career goals? Or simply get married and/or live off of their yearly title?

Moving forward in this extracurricular activity, I know what I desire from competing. I would love to connect and network with performers and writers, get a name for my publications and articles, help my community on a national level that I possibly couldn’t do on my own. However, for the girls who do not look forward to taking the “extra leap”, I do always wonder what their goal is for competing? The fame? The glamour? Or the chance of maybe becoming a reality show celeb like Kenya?

Hysterical Media

Until recent years, women were not “allowed” to receive intimate pleasure. If a woman did have the privilege of experiencing such enjoyment, she was thought to be going through fits or bouts of insanity because women weren’t supposed to enjoy pleasure. So, the origin of “hysteria” meant those “fits of pleasure” but in a negative connotation. Women even received medical surgeries to “cure” them of such antics. Later, people who were considered to be mentally unstable were thought to be “hysterics;” all originating from the same ideology.

Today, the restraints on women have been somewhat loosened, but women of color are still at the bottom of the totem poll in regards to society concerns — specifically black women. If women hundreds of years ago were considered to be hysterics and crazy just over simple enjoyments of life, then what does the popular mass consider black women who never receive justice or fair consideration in social, professional, or unethical environments? We can redefine their and our ideology of women, and, especially, black women.

Share this:

Like this:

Related

Leave a Reply Cancel reply