I have been fascinated by the concept of the beauty queen ever since I was 11, and saw Ellen Von aUnwerth’s cover shot for Live Through This, the Hole album fronted by the weeping pageant participant. When I worked for a teen mag, I was regularly packed off to ‘expose’ the truth behind the teen pageants, and come back with tales of bitchiness, histrionics and Swarovski encrusted gowns. ‘They all came with their Mums!’ I protested. ‘They all added each other on Facebook! I think some of them got their dresses from Tammy Girl!’ In my capacity as a junior editor, I was then asked to judge a teen pageant. I sat on the jury, interviewed hundreds and hundreds of finalists (OK, about 40) and awarded all my points to the girls who wanted to be engineers or vets. The winners were the ones who had raised tens of thousands of pounds for cancer charities and homelessness, not the ones who were the most adept with a curling iron.
When I left teen publishing, I thought my pageant days were over. But no! the Telegraph asked me to cover Mrs World UK, the only pageant for married women, again, briefed to expose. ‘Why would adult women want to parade around pretending to be princesses on a Sunday afternoon?’ I thought grumpily, as I boarded a train to Beaconsfield. After watching them for a few hours, I almost wanted to pretend to be a princess myself.
With all that in mind, I knew what people were expecting from Beauty Queen Or Bust - and I suspected the reality of the pageants might surprise them. The programme is covering regional Miss England finals across the UK, and the first episode took place in the Black Country, where we met a bunch of Brummie beauty queens.
Worryingly, the first thing you notice is that they’re almost all broke. Most of their gowns are prom dresses borrowed from cousins, or pieces painstakingly paid for in instalments. Natalie beams as she hands over a final wad of cash to the lady in the atelier. ‘And if I don’t win, I’ll….just walk around in it round Dudley!’ Diamond has used up all the cash she has in the world to get the gear to go through to the finals, and Sammi Jo can’t even manage to pay the £50 deposit. ‘I can’t afford simple things like bread and milk and cigarettes. I can’t do anything,’ she mutters, heartbreakingly. It’s easy to see why these women would want to enter. Miss England isn’t just a pageant. When full time employment is plummeting, education is more expensive and opportunities are hard to come by, it’s as plausible an escape route as any.
After seeing how broke these women are, and how much a crown would mean to them, it’s hard not to hate Ruby. In a way, Ruby is a logical winner - she’s gorgeous, well spoken, demure and a bit of a pageant veteran. But she’s surrounded by an adoring, confidence boosting family, lives in a lovely home, and is having her dresses custom made in New York for a grand a go. It’s not her fault she got lucky, just as it isn’t Sammi Jo’s fault that she’s broke, but you know the title would mean so much more - and do so much more - for one of the other women.
Diamond goes twerking in Walsall the night before the big final bootcamp, and almost attacks two women. Sammi Jo complains that a metaphorical ‘hurricane just came along and…hurricaned around my life.’ Maddy and Natalie stop at McDonald’s for a pre show snack and each order two burgers. They’re put through their paces with a bleep test and a shoe rehearsal, and bond over the grim hand life has dealt them. Diamond reveals that she used to live next to a crack den. ‘We’ve got those in Dudley!’ exclaims Natalie, all sisterly sympathy.
As well as looking lovely, the entrants have to show plenty of spirit, smartness and ingenuity, and in one round they get to design their own dress out of recycled materials. My favourite is the one who rocks up in human hair, pinched from her mum’s salon. Ruby is predictably immaculate in crepe paper. ‘I’ve made a fascinator because my style icon is Kate Middleton,’ she simpers. Boo! BOOOOO!
Eventually the results are announced. Ruby is second, and none of our other girls are placed. Diamond is completely distraught. Even bloody Ruby is disappointed because she didn’t actually win. When we see them later, she’s eventually become a runner up in Miss Birmingham. Inspiringly, Sammi Jo has a job caring for the elderly, and Natalie has passed her driving test, which means she can get her own McDonalds from the drive thru.
It’s hard to work out whether we’ve learned anything - or if there was any part of the process that boosted the contestants’ confidence, or at least gave them some nice memories to take home. Weirdly, the prevailing message was that beauty wasn’t being judged as much as wealth or class. I don’t think it behooves any of us to criticise the women who want to enter pageants, but when they’re working out who gets the crown, it doesn’t seem fair that an easier life equals an easy win.
Follow Daisy on Twitter @NotRollerGirl
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.