No food, no water, no signal, and no… eyeliner?!?

(first published in Manila Bulletin, Students and Campuses section)

The stage is set for the Forty-first Annual Miss Teen Dream Pageant. Fifty Teen Dreamers board the plane to Paradise Cove to film some fun-in-the-sun pieces and rehearse their performance numbers for the pageant. But the beauty queens never get to their destination, as the plane crashes, and the survivors find themselves marooned on a desert island — no food, no water, no signal, and no eyeliner.

Thus begins Scholastic Press’ Beauty Queens by NY Times bestselling author Libba Bray (A Great and Terrible Beauty, Rebel Angels, The Sweet Far Thing, and Going Bovine). Beauty Queens is a young adult novel that has the spirit of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies fused with Sandra Bullock’s Ms. Congeniality movies, or more accurately, that of the iconic 80’s Pinoy film, Temptation Island.

Meet the beauty queens

Among the girls accounted for after the fall are Miss Texas, Taylor Rene Krystal Hawkins; Miss New Hampshire, Adina Greenberg; Miss Nebraska, Mary Lou Novak; Miss California, Shanti Singh; Miss Michigan, Jennifer Huberman; Miss Rhode Island, Petra West; Miss Alabama, Brittani Slocum; Miss Mississippi Tiara Destiny Swan; Miss Colorado, Nicole Ade; Miss Illinois Sosie Simmons, and the unnamed Miss New Mexico, Ms. Ohio, Miss Arkansas, and Miss Montana.

Soot-streaked and their pageant sashes ragged, the girls assemble and create a camp, under the leadership of Miss Texas. They build huts on the beach, forage for food and rainwater, create a latrine out of an evening gown and a catapult out of a control-top girdle, and still manage to put on their best smiles despite the challenge of survival. And because they’re beauty queens, their daily routine includes working on their dance numbers, walking, talent performances, swimsuit and evening gown competitions, and even the question and answer portion.

But even the girls aren’t impervious to nature. As the hair sprouts on their religiously depilated legs, and salt water wreaks havoc on their daily conditioned manes, the polished Teen Dreamer veneer slips away, revealing each girl’s insecurities, aspirations, and their true personalities.

Adding more chaos to the island adventure, a pirate ship runs aground the beach, and a band of shirtless young pirates from the reality show “Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser” join the girls on the island. And on top of basic survival and vying for the attention of sexy pirates, the girls also stumble onto the sinister secret at the heart of the island: a covert operation carried out by mass media conglomerate The Corporation (coincidentally the main sponsor of Miss Teen Dream), in cooperation with the dictator MoMo B. Chacha, president of the Republic of Chacha, and former-Miss-Teen-Dream-gone-rogue Ladybird Hope.

Layered tale

Beauty Queens is an entertaining island romp layered with elements of coming of age, chick lit, action-adventure, dystopia, and satire, infused with an acerbic tone and campy humor.

As the point of view shifts across the different beauty queens, we learn more about each girl and the issues they deal with: the pressures of the real world such as sexuality, sexual orientation, angst, identity, feminism, juvenile delinquency, race, disability, weight, and stereotypes, not to mention frizzy hair and zits.

In the bigger picture, the book explores, sometimes with a bit of a heavy hand, mass media’s influence on consumerism. Structured much like a television show, it begins with “a word from the sponsor” (the Corporation), and is interspersed with “commercial breaks” featuring Corporation products (e.g. Lady ‘Stache Off hair remover, Git R Done 447 personal safety handgun, Maxi-Pad Pets, and tv shows such as Patriot Daughters and Captains Bodacious). The Corporation also does a running commentary (sometimes outright censorship) throughout the story promoting Corporation ideas, ratings of Corporation shows, and Corporation brands.

Finally, as the reader would expect, the book comes to its main agenda: coughing meaningfully towards the misogyny of beauty pageants, and how they objectify young women and perpetuate idealized beauty and body image. Beauty Queens turns this around, using Miss Teen Dream as a springboard for these young women to be comfortable in their own skin, forge real friendships among themselves, and mark out their path in the world.

***

Beauty Queens, hardcover with dust jacket, review copy
3.5/5 stars
Book #88 for 2011