Miss America 2012, Part 1 (Pre-Pageant Predictions)

I normally have friends over to watch Miss America (this year will just be me and my men though); they often wonder how I so accurately predict members of the Top 15 at the start of the pageant.  I have two "insider" tips: 1) Follow who wins the preliminaries during pageant week; 2) Read some pageant message boards. 1) This year saw six preliminary winners.  I believe, and many agree, that the Pageant is won in the interview room on Monday.  If the judges like you, they are more likely to give you a boost during other phases of the preliminary competition (like swimsuit). So it's a fair bet that at least half of these women (UT, WI, TX, OK, NY and HI) will make Top 15.  (I REALLY hope HI makes it far enough into tonight's live broadcast so that we get to see her jump rope talent routine that actually won the prelim-- last year people made fun of AR ventriloquism act and it was actually impressive!).  NY, TX, and OK have been especially hyped, so I'd say they are good bets, and I also expect WI to be there.  30% of tonight's results are based on the contestants "composite" score from prelims, so these winners tend to not only make Top 15, but go deep (rest of score is 20% swimsuit, 20% evening gown, and 30% talent).

Miss KY won the Quality of Life award, based on her platform, and she has some pageant links (former Miss America 2000 Heather French Henry is apparently a close family friend-- a fact that seems especially relevant if you read this hilarious Jezebel take on this year's crop of contestants, since Henry's husband is a former lieutenant governor of KY).

2) Certain states get talked up a lot on pageant message boards (I find this Voy board, Pageant Central, funny at times, and they will run a live Pageant chat, if you are interested.)  Many of the prelim winners have been Internet standouts from the start. Other "hyped" contestants include CO (daughter of former Miss America), SC (media darling for weight loss story), AZ, GA, IA, and NH. I would love to see NH go far and perhaps bring home the crown to New England, though this is probably less likely (while I enjoyed seeing Miss MA crowned in July, I don't think this is the year MA will *finally* get the crown). I personally think GA and IA have the Miss America "look," but don't know how far she will make it.

Carston and I have been studying this year's Program and here are a few random observations he wanted me to share with you:

* As I've mentioned, Miss Colorado, Diana Dreman, is the first daughter of a former Miss America to compete. I found it interesting that in her mom's "former" update the same picture is used that appears on Diana's contestant page. I guess they don't want people to forget...

* I also wonder if there will soon be another daughter competing. Miss America 1988, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko, has a daughter who is Miss Monroe County (MI) Outstanding Teen 2011. (Note that Miss NJ, who could also be a contender, was Miss NJ Outstanding Teen in 2008.)

* Standouts OK, TX, and SC have the most ads in the program book.

* At first I thought saying that Miss OK was first Oklahoman to medal at All-Ireland Irish Dance Championships was a bit much (especially in light of Jig). But then she won talent, so perhaps she is quite amazing!

* NY would appear to be the most academically advanced/accomplished (like the reigning Miss A, who is only 17 and was homeschooled until her senior year of high school).  NY was accepted to college at 16 and finished at 19; she is now 22.

*I found it fascinating that Miss VI, who goes to Barnard, listed Keeping Up with the Kardashians as her favorite show in the program book. Why? Well, because Kris Jenner is a judge!

Hope you feel more prepared to watch tonight and pick out some of these early standouts during the parade of states (my FAVORITE part of the pageant). Carston is all ready, with belles on! I hope to write more early next week with my thoughts on the final result. Until then, enjoy singing "There she is, Miss America, there she is, your ideal..."

Everything is Altering

This post was happily featured on Babble on April 18, 2012 as the post I am most proud of us a mom! One week ago I gave birth to our precious son, Carston Cook Levey Friedman. We have been affectionately referring to him as Little Man.

During labor I spent a good amount of time on Facebook and Twitter. It was amazing to feel like so many friends and family were part of the process.

A Twitter friend, Sarah Buttenwieser, sent me a message after he'd arrived, part of which said: "#everythingaltering."

That phrase, "everything altering," kept running like a loop through my head over the next 24 hours. I kept saying to myself, "Everything is altering. Everything is altering." Of course, the link to "altar" and worshiping him and all the promise he holds (as the Midrash says, "With each child the world begins anew") was not lost on me either.

I also kept thinking about the choice of tense. Everything alterED the moment he entered the world. As any mother knows, the moment when that little human life is both forced out of you, by you, and also slips out of you, on his own, is indescribable.  Everything changed in that moment.

And, yet, my husband, John, and I still remained ourselves. Life shattered for a brief moment and was then put back together with so much more love than we knew before. We were fundamentally changed and fundamentally the same all at once.  Case in point: On the day we left the hospital an article about John's research (which I've written a bit about before) appeared on the front page of The New York Times (and check out Nicholas Kristof's column tomorrow, which also discusses this work). He spent the next several hours on the phone with reporters and even doing a live interview from home.  I snuck in half an hour of work on an article I have coming out next Sunday in The Boston Globe Magazine on afterschool math enrichment centers.

So much the same, yet completely different.

Because it is not that everything alterED, but that it is alterING.  Every sigh, sound, thought, movement has a new meaning. And this is a continual process of negotiating new challenges together and renegotiating identities and expectations.

As I take in lots of wonderful advice (one wonderful example written by Rebecca Sullivan, "Pilfer Disposable Hospital Underwear?") and continue to share our evolving journey with loved ones, I look forward to finding out where this altering will take us as individuals, as a family, and as professionals.

This Saturday will capture many of those changes. We'll spend the morning following the US Marathon Trials, since John is a serious runner and running fan.

Then we'll watch the Patriots game (Go, Tom Brady!).

Finally, we'll switch to the Miss America Pageant. This will be the first time in many years that I won't be watching with friends while hosting a pageant party. Carston has been studying up on his favorites though. Once the preliminary competitions end tomorrow night, I plan to post my thoughts and predictions on this year's interesting group of contestants.

In the meantime, we'll be altering away.

ETA: I love that motherhood means entering new conversations and dialogue. Continued thoughts from Standing in the Shadows blog!

Beauty Games: A Review of Beauty Queens and Modelland (and why YA Novels appeal)

Tyra Banks has invented her own version of Hunger Games. No, not her competitive reality TV show America's Next Top Model, but Modelland, her debut novel about a mythical world where girls compete to become supermodels with superpowers.

Modelland, which came out in September, is pure Banks. It's a bit overblown and overly long, with lots of invented model-ly words.  But, it's also fun and silly. Now let's be clear, as an author Banks is no Suzanne Collins, who wrote the Hunger Games trilogy, which is a truly exceptional and riveting series for readers of all ages, and a trenchant commentary on social life, inequality, competition, and competitive reality television.  But Modelland, which clearly has echos of the war games involved in Collins' work, is subversive in its own way. In Modelland (both the physical setting and the novel), girls are the stars and boys are the accessories.  There is definitely an element of girl power, even though looks still matter. And it's not always the most beautiful girl who is the star either (though, of course, it doesn't hurt). There is a focus on female careers, and not leaving for a man; when a girl does leave for a member of the opposite sex it doesn't go so well. In addition to this message of female empowerment Banks slips in more mundane beauty lessons. For instance, through one terrifying challenge the girls learn why they shouldn't share make-up products or buy knock-off products/accessories. Like I said, a bit silly, though with a somewhat useful message.

Award-winning Young Adult author Libba Bray's latest, Beauty Queens, is also a bit silly-- but, like Banks, she promotes a message of subversive girl power even as she talks about beauty.

In Beauty Queens all the contestants in a teen beauty pageant go down in a plane crash on an island.  Only a few survive and those who do have to continue fighting for survival (so, again, a bit of a Hunger Games element)... While still preparing for a possible beauty pageant. Through the experience the girls, and the reader, learn that girls can be innovative and strong, while still wanting to look good and be true to themselves.  There are some jokes and observations about child beauty pageants (my favorite is when contestant/survivor Tiara, who started doing pageants at two weeks old, says she won Grand Supreme and one of the non-traditional state pageant queens responds by asking, "Do you want fries with that?" [page 45]) and competition among girls (“Compete is a rather ugly word, isn’t it?” [page 2]) which give the book a sarcastic edge that some teen readers in particular will appreciate.

It may surprise you that I read and write about so many Young Adult (YA) novels on this blog (for example, these dance novels and Wolitzer's new book on Scrabble tournaments).  But it shouldn't.  The topics covered in YA (especially those about topics I study, like organized sports and kids' activities, dance, beauty pageants, etc.) and the sense of immediacy in the stories make them interesting reads.  A recent piece in The Boston Globe by Meredith Goldstein helps explain why so many recent YA books (think Twilight, which I did read, but just couldn't get into the series itself) have had crossover appeal.

In any case, while Modelland and Beauty Queens are fun reads, if you're going to try out a YA novel for the first time, I definitely recommend the Hunger Games trilogy-- especially before the movies come out.  And if you're still hooked, try Bray's or Banks' take on what I call the "beauty games."

"Princess means that you' re a loser!": Recent beauty pageant portrayals on TV (UPDATED to include dance competitions)

Princess means that you're a loser! A lot of feminists might agree with this sentiment-- especially with the recent release of Disney's newest princess targeted at the preschool set, Sofia the First.

But it was a child beauty pageant mom who uttered this line during the continuing fourth season of TLC's Toddlers & Tiaras, which returned on December 7th.

The format is similar (introduce moms and kids at home, mock their hometowns, cover their pageant preparations, expose some sort of hijinks, show them arriving at pageant, getting ready, some pageant drama, and crowning) as are many of the themes ("beauty hurts," girls wanting to be Miss America, comparisons to dog shows, likening pageants to a drug/addiction). As I've said before I think many moms on this show are upping the crazy ante to get more screen time, and it seems that Michelle Leonardo, the reigning Miss New Jersey USA (herself a former child beauty pageant queen) agrees with me.

And, clearly, we have some new crazy to process. In the December 14th episode (set in the Midwest) it's princess meltdown mom, Kelly, who compares pageants to an addiction. Click below to see her expletive-laced explosion during crowning after she thinks her daughter didn't "pull" for a higher title.

In addition to showing this intense hissy fit, the new season has also brought us Riley, Bob, and Bob's rat tail in another episode (focused on a "Glitzmas" pageant in the Northeast).  Bob and Riley's parents both love drag shows and cite drag queens as an inspiration in their children's pageant preparations.  While there are clearly some similarities between drag and child beauty pageants, such an explicit connection is rare.

I also see a lot of similarities between child beauty pageants and Gypsy/Irish Traveller clothes and customs (which I suppose have their own similarities with drag), as I've written about before. While TLC covers both subcultures, I've never seen them make an explicit connection between the two.  If you're interested in more Gypsy/Traveller dresses check out the new TLC Gypsy Christmas Special, which premiered this week; the ones shown on wedding guests and at the First Communion in Ireland are especially noteworthy.

TLC isn't the only network giving us recent portrayals of child beauty pageants. On December 11th CBS' CSI: Miami was about a murder at a child beauty pageant.  The episode, "Crowned," had the following program description: "The CSIs expose the seedy underbelly of children's beauty pageants when a contestant's mom is murdered."  While the episode used the proper lingo for pageant terms, it did have the wrong look overall (for instance, the pageant was held outside and many of the dresses shown were outdated pageant styles).  It also featured common complaints about child beauty pageants-- that kids should just be kids, that they shouldn't look like dolls, that it puts them on display, etc.  While the fictional murder case was the opposite of the JonBenet Ramsey murder, since it was the mother who died, that didn't stop the show writers from introducing a sexual molestation angle.

I actually believe that the constant attempts to link child beauty pageants to pedophilia are a bit unfair. I'm not trying to defend pageants and say that they don't in fact place girls in sometimes sexual situations, because I think they do.  But the reality is that there has never been a reported case of child molestation because of child beauty pageants-- yet media portrayals consistently draw this link (another recent TV example: On September 29th of this year an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, called "Frank Reynolds' Little Beauties," features a molester who uses child pageants to find young girls to ogle).

Yes, there was evidence that JonBenet was molested, but it has never been proven that she died because of the pageants connection.  And, sure, we don't know for sure that young girls haven't been abused because of child beauty pageants-- it just may never have been reported.  There have been instances where pictures of pageant girls have appeared on websites that they shouldn't have, but this is true of Facebook pictures as well.  Given all the recent sexual abuse scandals in youth activities (and specifically girls in gymnastics), which I've written about here, it strikes me as odd that we don't pay more attention to activities where we know girls have been abused.  Having been to so many different children's competitive events for research purposes, I can say that child beauty pageants are far more careful about who is allowed around these young girls than any other activity.  They really aren't open to the public and males are kept away from girls.  I understand why pageants are an easy target, but I wish the media would sometimes pay more attention to where we know the bad guys really are.

It's also true that pageants can help some girls.  I have long been a fan of the MTV series Made. Becoming a pageant queen is a pretty common goal on this show and two new episodes (on 12/3 and 12/12) focused on seventeen-year-old girls training to compete in beauty pageants in New England and in Missouri. Both featured great, supportive, flamboyant, male coaches and spirited and well-spoken teenage girls.  While neither "won" the top title, both did well and learned a lot. You can watch one of the episodes in full here.  I love how both girls became role models in their own ways, too (unlike Miss USA 2010 Rima Fakih, recently arrested for drunk driving).

In spite of some flaws I know I'll keep watching Toddlers & Tiaras, Made, and any other pageant shows.  And I will for sure be watching the Miss America pageant, live on ABC on Saturday, January 14th-- even if I don't agree with most of their picks for judges this year!  I'll also be keeping a close eye on what happens with former Miss America Rebecca King's daughter, Diana Dreman, Miss Colorado (especially as I will likely be watching with my newborn son by then... at least I hope I will).

ETA: On the night I posted this a new episode of TNT's Rizzoli & Isles aired. Its title? "Don't Stop Dancing, Girl." The episode was about a murdered dance mom, who stumbles on stage during a routine with a pair of scissors sticking out of her neck.  The first half of the episode (recapped here), focuses on "Dance Moms"-like antics (moms screaming at one another, a security guard in the dance studio waiting area to monitor the moms, a mean teacher who yells, etc.).  Of course, as it turns out, the murder has *nothing* to do with dance competitions and instead involves a drug-trafficking ex-husband and witness protection.

Despite this the episode did produce some funny/interesting quips-- especially linking child beauty pageants and dance competitions, along with other competitive kids' activities.  First example: "It's like Little League. With Sequins." Another described the competition as a "beauty pageant with rhythm."  In defense of dancers , Rizzoli comments that dancers are athletes in costumes who practice 40 hours per week; she compared them to figure skaters.

Probably the most accurate and interesting thing to me in the episode was the focus on the girls' birth certificate, which a dance mom claimed was forged.  This ultra-competitive mom claimed that the dead mom was trying to help her daughter win against younger competitors.  As it turns out, the birth certificate was faked to help hide her from her dangerous dad. But parents manipulating kids' ages to give them an advantage against younger competitors has actually happened (most famous case is Danny Almonte), and it is a frequent allegation in all kids' competitive activities.

I wonder which show will next tackle beauty pageants and dance competitions? I could see Rizzoli & Isles doing on episode on Irish Dancing, given its Boston setting.

Review of COMPETITION in the International Review of Modern Sociology

I recently published a book review of Francesco Duina's new sociological investigation on competition in the latest issue of International Review of Modern Sociology.

You can read the review by CLICKING HERE. While it did appear in an academic journal, I believe the review (and the book itself!) should be accessible to a non-academic audience.

If you've read the book, would love to hear your thoughts!