Looking at this 2011′s Miss New York USA’s top 7 unearths no new memories. The white-garbed winner, Amber Collins, took the lead. About one year ago, I entered and lost my first beauty pageant in that same hotel – and I’ve mentally walked through every moment of that weekend five times over.

What you don’t see from looking at the photos or watching Miss USA in the spring is how these women get there. How low rent state-level competitions are. How the contestants who never get anywhere look. It’s a bizarre and fascinating experience, one that I wouldn’t dissuade any woman from trying out herself.

I can only describe it as a brain-bending, empty calorie endorphin rush, like drinking a pink can of Tab in one enormous gulp. It’s watching the water turn brown as you wash off the pancake makeup. It’s the exhaustion as you perfectly turn out one false eyelash for the fifth time. The headiness of a post-workout glow, then staring yourself down in the gym mirror, hair wispy and skin sallow. Then you look around and realize that all your efforts are for naught – the girls who end up in the top ten rigged the genetic lottery in their favor.

Truth: A State Pageant Isn’t Glamorous

Mostly, though, it is realizing what a cheap, tawdry spectacle a state pageant is. The audience is filled with family members; the runway is in the same room a million bored hotel guests have brunched in; the vast majority of contestants are not Amazonian, but rather, perfectly ordinary girls with cellulite snapped into prom dresses. It’s produced suspiciously like your high school talent show, but with a $1000 entry fee and everyone’s talent is walking in lucite platform heels.

What are these girls even competing for? The prize package is getting your entry fee reimbursed, plus some donated baubles and a small scholarship you’ll never use to a school you’ve never heard of. You get to spend a month doing photo ops and rehearsals in Las Vegas in hopes of becoming Miss USA. If you win Miss USA, you try to win Miss Universe. And then… You’re a beautiful woman. Paparazzi snidely speculate on your plastic surgery. Congratulations – you spend your days traveling, doing charitable work, making appearances, and maintaining the good lucks that won you your title.

I gave it my best shot.

Of course, you can use your title for good, to advance a cause you believe in or use the appearance schedule to groom your public speaking. Maybe it will help you land a modeling or acting job you’ve always dreamed of. Some incredible women, accomplished in their own right, have won crowns too.

The rest end up with a gift bag or a plaque if they’re lucky. In photos, outsiders only see the one girl who won out of 200 entrants. The ones who don’t win are infinitely more interesting.

Truth: They Don’t Actually “Select” You.

… If only because you can smell, at the grassroots, the booming heartbeat of the beauty industry. Why do so many women fork over $1000, pay for their own expensive evening dresses and swimsuits never to be swam in, to walk down some cheap runway for a crown unlikely to materialize?

It’s because contestants truly believe they were “selected” to participate after applying and getting an email telling them they’ve been “accepted”. That the color of their money, to a producer, is different than anyone else’s. This is not every contestant, but it is significant proportion. I would see some girls so clueless that I would offer to lend them hair curlers and makeup to assuage my guilt.

My own optimism swung wildly from one pole to the other, coupled with uncomfortable feeling that entering a pageant seemed to give classmates the provisional right to judge me.

Truth: The Swimsuit Portion Is Not That Hard

To announce you’re entering a pageant is to open the floodgates of judgement. It is every student’s worst fear – making oneself vulnerable to strangers, to fail so spectacularly and publicly.

I will never regret entering Miss New York USA 2010, however, because I found that no one really cared that much I had failed. It was an instructive experience. No one had really expected me to win, I think, and there was something incredibly freeing about that. I was more fixated on my small gaffes – swinging one arm too much walking in swimsuit, awkward interviews with judges – not on the crown I had never felt was mine in the first place.

And for the record, I found that one doesn’t feel ashamed onstage in a swimsuit so much as blinded – the lights are bright; they say your name, you walk, shivering with anxiety, stomach taut and starved. Then the camera flashes. You are done. You feel euphoria, relief.

This is what they call “everyone is a winner.” You’ve just survived, or you’ve been suckered. It’s not hard to see why the first option is more appealing for most.

Related posts:

1. An anthropological view of beauty pageants
2. Why I’m entering a Beauty Pageant
3. Miss New York USA Day 1: Swimsuit Preliminary

I ordered these off of Endless.com specifically for pageant purposes (see my entry on why I’m competing in Miss New York USA)

Now the question is, will I be able to wow judges with my ability to twirl, pose, sashay just so? See this hilarious (and really useful!!) video. I’ve been trying out that “C” shape and it’s definitely helped with making my walk less stomp-y. Feminists hate me.

Related posts:

1. Behind the scenes at Miss New York USA, Day 2

FRIDAY

12:15pm: decide to drop Macroeconomics. Now I’m only taking four classes!

1:15pm: Run off with Crimson photographer to Second Time Around, Oona’s, and Great Eastern Trading Company to get audio and video for a slideshow. Photographer is unexpectedly hiliarious; storeowners are sometimes crazy/unstable.

4:30pm: Makeovers at the YWCA. Turns out the women are more impressed by my French manicure skillz than my artful eyeshadow application. I administer white tips on nails ragged, chapped, and worn down to their nubs. The women are very sweet. I am embarrassed by the state of my makeup collection, which is smeared in spilled bronze eyeshadow.

6:30pm: Stop at Kickass Cupcakes in Davis Square for some uh, kickass cupcakes as a birthday gift. I order four, with an extra for myself. I wolf down my mojito cupcake walking back to the T stop. The cream cheese frosting is cut the tang of lime and the center is soaked with rum – enough to warm my throat.

Kickass Cupcakes

10:30pm: Drop off birthday present. Present recipient is inebriated and proceeds to throw up twice, after which she feels better and munches on a corner of a Super Chocolate cupcake. The rest go in the fridge.

12:30pm: I am shooed off the table of of The Advocate by the DJ, who reminds me that it collapsed last time. Time for the Kong!

1am: Mmm, scallion pancakes and scorpion bowls. How much more classic can you get?

SATURDAY

2pm: Time to research in the North End for the Unofficial Guide. I have lunch at La Famiglia Giorgio, which is not really worth the shitty cellphone pictures I took of it. I nosh on lobster ravioli smothered in pink vodka cream sauce and scallop giorgio.

4:33pm: Woah, the Freedom Trail! Woah, tourists! Paul fucking Revere! This feels wrong, somehow. Kind of like touching John Harvard’s foot, you know?

Japanese love their tentacles

8pm: Valentine’s dinner, spontaneously found in Porter Square Exchange Mall at Blue Fin. Stop at Kotobukiya, a Japanese grocery, first.

Kotobukiya

Monkfish liver, duhhh (Does cooking use only mean that it can't be an organ transplant?)

Then, the actual meal, which was expansive, adventurous, and lovely.

Sashimi on a bed of natto (fermented soybean with a bizarrely sticky nature - picking it up results in cobweb-like strings trailing from bowl to plate)

Unagi, my favorite!

Valentine's day sushi platter... the rose stem to the left of the image was secured in a base of wasabi.

Donburi bowl, the roe is fun to eat.

SUNDAY

10am: Work out at the gym, which I’ve failed to do for longer than I’d have liked.

Noon: Do some hair and makeup for the Identities fashion show photoshoot. The nice thing about doing makeup, I’ve realized, is far from making you see all the flaws you should cover up, it makes you see all the little things that make someone beautiful.

Near the end, I hold down the fort while the models are off doing their hip hop shoot. I take photos of myself with my hairspray-assisted hairstyle.

Photobooth: sometimes better for boredom than Facebook.

2:30pm: Off to the Garment District and The Closet for more audio and photos for the audio slideshow with another photographer. This takes way too long.

Me standing in front of the Garment District's shocking pink storefront.

7pm: Crimson exec dinner. People give silly gifts, I watch passively, feel lonely, go back to Crimson and finish editing slideshow. It’s BALLER. Me and the editor do the crossfade. We add background noise. I do voiceovers. He records me screaming “fuck a duck!” incessantly. We laugh. We cry. We mock the interview subjects.

12:45am: Exit the Crimson. Finally.

Here is the fruit of my labor (plus 3 other dedicated people).

This took, uh, 10 solid hours of my life.

Related posts:

1. Kickass Cupcakes to add ice cream cupcakes
2. Masa’s in Porter Square Exchange Mall serves some really awful sushi
3. Kickass Cupcakes: A Happy Hour

Sometimes makeup fanatics will call themselves “beauty addicts,” like the quest for ever shinier hair, ever more pneumatic lips, and freakishly long lashes is a dehabilitating illness, akin to gross public displays of inebriation or a deviated septum from a prolific coke habit.

I suppose you could see it this way. It is true, falling down the Vitamin C spiked skin serum-slicked slope of beauty addiction is a pleasant kind of freefall. It is at once disgusting and awe-inducing. You realize that there are so many things wrong with you. And you realize there are so many solutions. You realize that there are finer gradiations of that alluring cheek flush than you could have ever imagined, and that it comes in salacious, X-rated names like Orgasm and Sin. (Available at your nearest Sephora at the NARS counter.)

I am more of a hobbyist than a hardcore addict.

I suscribe to occasional exfoliation (not nearly often enough), a sporadic regimen of vanilla spice-scented body butter, daily broad-spectrum SPF 70 sunscreen, and not really brushing my hair. I find it difficult to leave my room without some foundation. I’m a true believer in the curative powers of blush – come hell, hangover, or all-nighter, a bit of rouge on the cheeks will solve nearly anything. And an entire counter in the medicine cabinet behind the mirror is stocked with lipgloss, mostly in shades of fuschia and berry and mauve.

There is always something so digustingly hopeful about buying makeup. As I walked past the shelves of CVS today, it occured to me maybe I should get some black gel eyeliner. I mean, I have a black eyeliner pencil (runny) and liquid (too harsh) and black eyeshadow (not pigmented enough). And if I get it, I would have to get the perfect angled brush. Because the other 6 brushes I have aren’t adequate. There’s always this chance for self-betterment. Hope springs eternal.

At this point, I guess I should cut to the chase. Here are a few things that I like, and I hope you find your own brand of happiness, whatever shade of creme eyeshadow that may be.

Oh, one more thing – there are more expensive, better products than these, but in my cheap, college student life, I’ve found these to be reliable, beautifying, and most of all, very, very easy on the wallet. I’ve named more expensive, superior alternatives in some cases.

One thought: I read that French women attain their feminine allure by an air of mystery and perfect grooming. They won’t tell you where they get their hair cut, or precisely what kind of skin cream they use, or their secret methods to a svelte figure. I’ve read that generally speaking, that is the sticking point of how to obtain that X factor, that you know, je ne sais quoi. But the truth is, je ne suis pas comme elles. (J‘ai étudié un peu francais quand je suis étais en ecole, mais maintenant, je ne me souviens beaucoup.) Translation: I’m not like them. And I studied a little French when I was in high school, but now, I don’t remember much. And I used Google translator to help me get it right. See, no mystery.

Related posts:

1. Behind the scenes at Miss New York USA, Day 2
2. Live Fast, Die Pretty