While it’s not entirely accurate to say that it was a voice from the grave that ordered me to leave Mrs. America’s contest, that’s not exactly a lie either. The fact lies somewhere in between and reaches an unreliable photographer, the risk of a friend to disown me, and a seedy bra that Ivana Trump once wore. But for five days, I’m Cathy Alter, your lady from Georgetown DC.
It all started in a situation of lack of confidence, something that is never smart in competition. My 11-year-old son Leo and I were sharing a late lunch at a British-style pub in Dupont Circle, Washington. D. C. As we sat breaking our mozzarella sticks, I took a moment to check my email on my phone. Maybe it was my text neck, or maybe Leo had never noticed me in a stern profile, however, anyway, he reached out and grabbed the loose. piece of meat that lives under my chin (an acacia, a friend would kindly explain to me).
“What is it?” He asked, pulling her as if she were an udder.
I don’t know how I responded to him, but I try not to cry or ask my son if he was some kind of sociopath.
“My neck hurts,” Nora Ephron confessed at the 2006 opening essay of the same name.
“Our faces are lies and our necks tell the truth,” he wrote. “You have to open a redwood to see how old it is, but it wouldn’t be if it had a neck. “
Today, at 57, it’s hard not to look in the mirror without thinking about how much my reflected image has changed. It’s me, but it’s not me. The face is definitely mine, only emptier, the domain under my eyes is hollowed through a wooden caliber. It’s less feminine, in a way, and more Father Founder, especially when my hair is pulled back in a Jefferson braid. Possibly Don’t talk about my burgeoning FUPA.
Accepting this symbol would be the healthiest way to go. The most stimulating thing I can do for myself would be to love the puppet mouth, the nasolabial folds, the “eleven” between the eyebrows, the time stamps that make this face unique. Singing, singing, emblazoning on a T-shirt: Here I am, world!A middle-aged woman with a declining look and a comfortable body!
Instead, I went home and cried to my husband, Karl.
“Every child thinks their mothers are the most beautiful women in the world,” I said through tears. “And it’s clear that Leo isn’t. “
“Well,” Karl, “what can you do about it?”
I couldn’t say whether he responded rhetorically or whether he expected me to propose a course of action.
And he had a plan. Or, more accurately, a wild impulse that trampled anyone who was in balance.
“I’ll tell you what I’m going to do,” I said. I’m going to enter a good-looking contest and win. “
When I grew up in Connecticut, my parents used to host an annual Miss America party where guests bet on the contestants as if the girls were racehorses. It was the most popular ticket in the city. Friends arrived in nightgowns and tuxedos, he threw $20 into the jar and supported his “daughter” as he demolished the other 49.
My mother, an attractive 6-foot-tall person with a penchant for red lips and backless suede dresses, can be just plain cruel, taking note of a competitor’s “thunder thigh” or “unfortunate bottom bite” or describing a pair of nostrils directly as resembling the “Holland Tunnel. “
As the owner of the trendiest clothing store ever seen by Bermuda-clad women in our sleepy town, my mother is a true arbiter of taste and presentation. In the middle of the afternoon, everyone laughed and the guest who came closest to choosing the winner of the night I walked with a homemade shawl and a dime crown, which I was given through my mother.
Now, decades later, I discovered a plethora of pageants on Pageant Planet, an online page that aggregates local and regional pageants, adding Miss Earth USA, Mr. Crimson and Cream, and the pageant I ended up participating in, Mrs. DC. There were contests for veterans, for seniors (I’m still a few years away from that one), for well-figured women, and one that feels like a meta-version of itself, The Empowered Woman contest. To create a montage of the contestants I’ve seen on the site, the result would resemble the B-rolls from each and every existing Real Housewives franchise.
The rules for entering the Mrs. DC America contest were simple. If you were married, you could simply participate, which meant I could potentially compete with little girlfriends. Contestants are judged in 3 categories: interview, night pass and costume. As if crossing the level in suit and high heels wasn’t scary enough, there would be an opening dance number. With choreography. The winner of Ms. D. C. would go on to become part of the District of Columbia at the Ms. America National Contest in Las Vegas.
The next morning, I called one of the contest directors. After a small chat, I learned that I had just under five weeks left to prepare for the event, which would be held in a network more than an hour away, in Frederick. Maryland. De a way, I had imagined that I would have at least a year to prepare, either physically and mentally. Now things were becoming very genuine and very mysterious at the same time.
“What do you say your belt?” She asked.
When I hesitated, puzzled by her question, she clarified, “Where are you in Washington?
That’s my name Mrs. Georgetown DC, after paying a $250 deposit (total entrance fee is $750) and promising to schedule a photo with the official contest photographer within a week.
I immediately went into overdrive, making a to-do list as if I was planning my wedding. Each action item has led me to new actions. I made an appointment for highlights, but did I need to communicate about hair extensions as well?How much did hair halos cost? (What were hair halos?!) I didn’t have time to sit down and think about who I was a quick fit for.
I called the photographer and asked him what I needed to bring to the photo shoot. Everything on his list included the word dazzling. He also advised, “Wear anything that shows your cleavage or your shoulders, but both. This is just an exaggeration.
I bought a bag of rhinestones and stuck them in my swimsuit, which I kept calling a “one-piece bikini” for some reason.
“Are you going to photograph me in a bathing suit?”, I asked.
“No,” he said. I just wanted to tell you about rhinestones. “His parting advice, worthy of his own dazzled T-shirt, was: “Go glamorous or go home. “
My friends were divided over my new title. Some of them had a great time at my expense. “Can your suit be Victorian or have a high collar?” one of them asked. Does AARP have a good-looking contest? Another asked, holding back a laugh. One of them emailed me an Amazon link for Preparation H, which used to tighten the bags under the eyes. “Maybe you can use it on your butt too,” the song said.
Others more perplexed.
“It’s ironic that you’re seeking acceptance and accepting it as true in a position even designed not to give it,” said one of my closest friends, expressing concern.
Some were outraged. When I met a friend and former editor, she called the table. ” You can’t do that!”he said, raising his fist to take another blow. ” What does that say about the progress made as women?”
She spoke of how precarious it is to be a woman after Roe v. Wade. Wade, the elimination of abortion rights and the terrible message about appearance it would send to Leo. She told me she wasn’t sure she could just be my friend if I entered the contest.
I still saw myself as a champion just for participating: “You’ve been given a bigger stage, to stand up for all the other people who don’t feel well. You say, “I’m here, I’ve made it, and so have you. “
She had been Mrs. Georgetown for two days before the concept of competing began to look like a half-hearted concept. And what kind of message was I sending myself?To my husband?In Leo? (“Do you think I can win?”, I asked the deficient boy, who immediately turned to Karl for a clue before replying, “It depends on the competition. “)
I’ve had a confusing relationship with beauty. As their ruthless Miss America parties suggest, my parents put a heavy price on physical appearance. When we were little, my dad used to chase my younger brother and me around our pool with a spray. by Sun In toplighter. After growing up in poverty, eating mayonnaise sandwiches and fending for himself, having golden-haired, tanned young men who seemed to belong to the Kennedy Complex was, for him, an emblem of success.
My mother’s guiding precept was that it was more vital to be charming than to feel good. When I was in the best school, she sat me down and gently explained that since I wasn’t an herbal beauty, “no Christie Brinkley,” were her words. “I deserve to put on makeup.
I was about to become a woman, and my mother’s grim assessment took root in my soul. Before dementia completely stripped her of her ability to speak, the last transparent words my mother said to me were, “How about I blush?
On my third day as Mrs. Georgetown, it was time to see some nightgowns at my favorite consignment store in Washington. Although saleswomen are not allowed to mention the origin of their products, I did quite well. Some staff members and I were able to explain some details.
In the same spirit, I found myself in the dressing room with what I knew to be an evening gown once worn by Ivana Trump through a designer whose name I didn’t know. It costs $125 and the color of canned tomato sauce, with a mermaid silhouette, red jewelry strewn across the front, and about 40 miles of tulle. When I opened it, I saw that there was a dirty Calvin Klein strapless bra sewn inside, long 36C, and I felt a sudden twinge in my heart, knowing What a personal detail about Ivana. My mother also wore a 36C. Placing my own breasts inside the bra and being so close to their original owner is strangely intimate.
I looked in the dressing room mirror, trying, unsuccessfully, to believe myself walking across a level at a convention center in Frederick, Maryland, waving majestically, chest out, a smile aided by Vaseline on my teeth, hammer feet squeaking on straps. . of my stilettos.
I heard a voice.
“Take it off,” he said. “It’s you,” he said.
It didn’t matter if it was my mom or Ivana talking. The one who dresses is not me. And I found out that neither did the contest.
My mom warned me not to fall in love with a pretty face. “It turns out it’s fading away,” he said after a movie star-like boy erased my heart. You may have simply talked about your own vulnerabilities similar to appearance and aging. So I knew that, despite her critical eye, even she identified deep down that there were things more valuable than appearance. My mom would have been ruthless in her evaluation of my chances in the contest (none) and in my resolve to participate (stupid).
What’s the point of beauty, anyway?It must have been a burden to my mother, who sought with all her might to keep up appearances until that weight passed to my father. He became her de facto makeup artist while she sat strapped to a wheelchair, unable to bring out her face. their own ministries, with their hands clasped in rage.
After watching him serve her lunch (“Now, now,” he would say every time she tried to bite her fingers), seeing him wiping his lips with his Love That Red logo made me reevaluate my own definition of devotion. — of obligation. In the face of the inevitable, my father’s unspoken efforts broke my heart.
In my day as Mrs. Georgetown, I called the pageant director and dropped out of the race.
“Has something happened?” She looked horrified, as if she had microdermated my face.
“I don’t have my entire circle of family and friends,” was my excuse, which came close to the truth, at least in part.
I later learned that the woman wearing my Mrs. Georgetown scarf was from Rockville, Maryland. In the official contest photo, she looks a bit like Jennifer Coolidge Facetuned.
The contest took place the same weekend as my father’s birthday. At my home in Connecticut, I showed my father a picture of my “repositioning. “
“It’s a smart thing that you quit,” he said. You didn’t stand a chance. “
“Grandpa!” I read to the face, worried.
“Thank you for your vote of confidence,” I said, patting him on the arm and assuring me that the limitations are not hereditary.
Later that night, Leo passed me a note before going to bed. It read, in part, “I love you for yourself. I love your sweet, gentle heart. Even if you are beautiful, it is the internal that counts.
It’s a note my mom had written and mailed to her.
Cathy Alter’s articles and essays have appeared in O, Oprah Magazine, The Cut, Wired, and The Washington Post, among others. She is the author of “Virgin Territory: Stories From the Road to Womanhood,” the memoir “Up for Renewal: What Magazines Taught Me About Love, Sex, and Starting Over,” and “CRUSH: Writers Reflect on the Love, Longing, and Enduring Power of Their First Celebrity in Love. “He lives in Washington, DC.
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