‘Miss New York USA 2010’ Archives
An anthropological view of beauty pageants
Once upon a time, I was a contestant in Miss New York USA 2010, and I blogged a lot about it. And posted photos of my experience. If you read coverage, you'll find that I had a positive experience overall. I also noted in my paper that my dieting/exercising/obsessing was probably more appropriate for someone competing on the national level - so my stress level was definitely more elevated [...]
[Photo Album] Hey, Remember That Time I Tried to be a Beauty Queen?
![[Photo Album] Hey, Remember That Time I Tried to be a Beauty Queen?](http://lingboli.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/imgp4792-300x225.jpg "[Photo Album] Hey, Remember That Time I Tried to be a Beauty Queen?")
Love her! Everything a beauty queen should be - smart, ambitious, and yes, gorgeous. This photo shall serve as photo evidence that I was indeed, for two brief seconds, ever so fit and tan. I'm a little scared by the ribs, but I think that's just my oversize skeleton poking through. Yeah, I had no idea why they had cadets there either. There are just some things you don't [...]
Getting fat again
So I use "fat" in a tongue-in-cheek way. But I definitely spent the last few weeks watching what I ate, which meant no crazy banquet dinners, dinners of scrambled egg whites and vegetables, and the occasional helping of cheese dip, heaped high with guilt. As a result, my stomach became a cast iron tank. My collarbone and ribcage took greater prominence. When I lay down, I marveled at how my [...]
Some reflections on pageantry
So it's back to being a civilian again. I applied a slick of black eyeliner and donned my skinniest jeans to commemorate the thinnest that I have ever been - I'm doing some guilt-free gorging on sushi, Chinese food, and lattes for a few days. Being in a pageant made me realize (although my friends have been telling me for a long time) that I'm thin. For some reason, I assumed that [...]
I didn’t win! But I learned…
... that I'm fine the way I am, and that my favorite girls, Dana and Runa, were ROBBED of the title. D: The girl who won is in the middle: My roommate Dana is on the right, she placed in the top five. More coherent thoughts later on the whole experience.
My scary pageant face
So it's about an hour until I have to leave, and I'm slathered in spray tan makeup all over my body. I'm wearing so much makeup I'm afraid my skin will never recover. My false eyelashes are coated in black mascara goo. My hair is teased within an inch of its life. Beauty is so, so ugly.
Final show for Miss NY USA 2010 in three hours
... wish me luck! They'll be announcing the top 20, who will walk again in their evening gowns. After that, it'll be narrowed to the top ten, who switch into their swimsuits in a frenzy of nakedness and boob-adjustment. Then the lucky top five will be announced - and they'll quick change again into evening gown and answer really easy questions off their bio sheets. I'm currently 1) groggy. [...]
Behind the scenes at Miss New York USA, Day 2
Welcome to another day of hair teasing, fake eyelashing, and uh, sitting around. A lot of being in a pageant involves two activites Getting "ready" This takes at least two hours and 20 products and half a can of hairspray. Essential to the process is the tease-and-curl (not some crunk dance move) of backcombing strips of hair to create that 80's mall diva allure. I failed at this for [...]
Miss New York USA Day 1: Swimsuit Preliminary
I have been declared cattle contestant 247 in the Miss New York USA 2010 pageant. In all honesty, day 1 has been fun in the most wholesome of ways: all the girls (including myself) help each other behind the scenes. We cheer each other on. We compliment each other's swimsuits. We paint on obscene amounts of bronzer. We all have stretch marks, cellulite, big butts, flat hair, and ungainly [...]
Lingbo gives herself skin cancer, or, tanning is fun.
Back in high school, I knew several things were true about the world: Ugg boots were an abomination to nature, and I would never wear them. Tanning was absurd, and the physical symbol of capitalism and industrialization. (Not that there is anything wrong with those.) Only Paris Hilton-wannabes would do such sick, frivolous things to themselves. I would never, ever, ever, ever get into [...]
A Quest for Lovely Locks: stylist Gregory Wilde gives me highlights.
Hair is one of the most effective tools anyone has. You can curl it, straighten it, dye it any color of the rainbow, and even attach other people's hair to your hair. Since a good or bad haircut and totally change the shape of your face (I mean, no average, feminine woman looks great with a crew cut versus long, flowing waves) hairdressers are the guardians of female power. They wield [...]
Dude, I’m so stressed.
It's really, really hard to be beautiful. Let's ignore so-called "natural beauty" for a second as a freakish genetic aberration - which is its - since the confluence of genes and cultural values is not something any of us can control. There are many kinds of beauty, and I'd argue that the beauty queen type of beauty is a pretty inhospitable one, an exaggerated, gay man's ideal of [...]
Not all beautiful women are stupid
Commenter LindaW replied to my "Why I'm entering a beauty pageant" post with this: Please don’t prejudge pageant contestants, especially Tracey. I can tell you, not only is she absolutely gorgeous in person, but she’s also one SMART woman. A native Mandarin speaker, she also speaks perfect English. She went to college on a full academic scholarship, worked on Wall St., and is now studying [...]
The food blogger’s guilt
I found myself last night hovering over a bowl of neon yellow, cake batter flavored ice cream. It was delicious, in an artificially sweetened, bizarrely colored, stale cake bit-infused goop kind of way. This contrasted with my diet-approved dinner of spinach greens, tuna, an orange, and chicken breast. I had wondered, back in the spring, what food blogging would mean combined with my type A [...]
The Beauty Pageant Diet
I've heard rumors that South American beauty queens eat nothing but tuna. On MTV's Real Life: I'm on a diet, one contestant ate only cottage cheese to drop the weight. I'm not about to do any such thing, since I also have to be a full time student, adhere to a workout schedule, intern, freelance, have a social life, sleep, and do a full slate of extracurriculars, but if I'm doing a beauty pageant [...]
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