Boston Restaurant and Food Blog » Miss New York USA 2010

The Ugly Truth About Beauty Pageants

Lingbo Li — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:44:54 +0000

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.

An anthropological view of beauty pageants

Lingbo Li — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:07:45 +0000

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 than many other contestants.

I ended up not only blogging about the experience, but writing a 24 page paper on it. The paper was written in about two days… and the class was on the anthropology of consumerism, which explains why I focused on beauty as a commodity.

Here’s an excerpt, the conclusion, which has been edited for general blog-y consumption.

But the fact remains that there’s only one girl who gets the crown.

Some of the contestants are models. Many of the top 20 had done at least some modeling work in their lives, and the girl who eventually ended up winning, Davina Reeves, is signed to a modeling agency. But the vast majority were fairly normal girls. Many were short, heavy, plain, and did not have expensive dresses. Some were pretty, but not tall, slender, or striking enough to have careers as models. Some wanted to be actresses or astronauts, some ran businesses, many were students.

I was confused at first why so many of these girls were entering a pageant. It was an expensive and time-consuming task. Did they actually think they had a shot at the title?

One girl revealed that she had attended Barbizon modeling school (widely known to be, in strong words, a scam). She wore a cheap, simple dress from her prom: “I kept it since I knew I was going to use it for something special,” she said. She carried her modeling portfolio with her at all times in case the opportunity arose.

Talking to her, I felt something of a sadness and incredulity that while her optimism buoyed her, it also left her vulnerable to paying large sums of money so that she could play out a dead-end fantasy.

In interviews with contestants, some seemed to be inarticulate about their motivations for entering, what duties a winner had, and whether a pageant placed undue emphasis on appearance. While some contestants seemed calm and clear-headed about the experience – taking each portion for what it was – others focused on the duties of a beauty queen without concrete plans. This is a symptom more of the pageant itself – the USA system is not focused around community service and scholarship, and it would be unfair to expect contestants to have a well-formulated “platform” as the Miss America organization requires.

In the end, as one contestant commented, “As long as [the contestants] feel good about themselves, it’s more money for the pageant and it’s a good experience for them.” While preparing for a beauty pageant is a commodified experience in itself, the very act of entering a pageant and performing in one is another prepackaged fantasy.

With so many girls competing and only one title, the experience itself is the real thing that these girls seek. For one weekend, they treated precisely like Miss New York USA, among their ranks, is. For a few short minutes, they are able to walk down a runway, smile for the judges, and have their photo taken at the end of the runway (available for purchase later), just like every other contestant. They may not win the title, but they can befriend those who do.

Because of how similarly each contestant is treated and presented for the first two days of preliminaries, the pageant boosts their self-images and allows them feel on par with every other girl, as well as giving them a sense of accomplishment in having overcome insecurities of appearing on stage. Far from making these girls feel objectified – some could return only blank, nondescript answers when I asked them about objectification – it seemed to be a thrilling experience.

If we are to view this negatively, the aim of a beauty pageant has a similar objective as the beauty industry at large: to peddle the myth that if enough products are bought, if you curl your hair with the right iron, if you have the right dress and shoes and walk, that you, too, can be a beauty queen. Beauty then becomes a skill.

In the end, I am wary of comments that I should have placed, because part of me wonders if I had been similarly deluded into thinking that I could be a beauty queen.

Pageants are – and will continue to be – a pyramid scheme. For every beauty queen crowned, there are dozens and hundreds and thousands of hopefuls that empty their bank accounts for naught. Pageant preparation sells the message that buying the most beautiful dress and tanning your skin to the perfect shade will bring you another step close to the crown. And it’s a message, that to some degree, is true – having a better dress and having a tan does help a woman win that title. The standardization of the appearance and wardrobe of winning contestants works to perpetuate the idea that a crown can be “earned”. But ultimately, the most striking commodity in a pageant is how feeling like a beauty queen is an experience to be bought– by paying thousands of dollars to walk down a runway and strike a pose, contestants are paying to have the same experience as the winner.

[Photo Album] Hey, Remember That Time I Tried to be a Beauty Queen?

Lingbo Li — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 04:16:48 +0000

Me and the best Miss NY USA ever, Tracey Chang

Love her! Everything a beauty queen should be – smart, ambitious, and yes, gorgeous.

I am now paler and paunchier, four days after the fact.

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.

FOBs need love, too.

Yeah, I had no idea why they had cadets there either.

There are just some things you don’t question.

Getting fat again

Lingbo Li — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:44:44 +0000

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 skin stretched over my gently jutting hipbones. It felt like a lesson in skeletal anatomy.

So on my first day back on Planet Girl, I felt totally free to go on a carb-and-calorie rampage. I was going to eat EVERYTHING and ANYTHING I could possibly ever want to eat. I was going to ignore stomach pains. I was going to consume whatever was put in front of me, especially high in simple starches, sugar, and fats. I was going to try to undo whatever I had done to myself.

The night before, I’d made good work of a ginger-and-scallion lobster dish, a beef/pepper/pineapple stirfry, and a salt and pepper fried squid at Peach Farm in Chinatown. The verdict: the cooking was a bit rushed, and the quality suffered as a result. My dad commented on how slapdash the dishes seemed to be put together, although the beef stirfry was meltingly tender and delicious. Then I topped it off with a half a red bean bun as I stalked around on my 5 inch clear heels, bronzer still caked on my stomach, legs, and arms.

I went to bed with a horrible stomach ache.

I woke up in the morning and ate a bowl of cereal with milk, pistachio muffin, and orange. I was just getting warmed up. For lunch I had a tray of salmon maki from the Greenhouse Cafe. It was horrible – the rice was gummy and hard, the fillings nearly flavorless – but I downed it all anyway. During section, my TF brought in a bag of chocolate squares. I had two – dark and caramel.

Afterwards, I headed to the North End to return my wonderful stylist’s hair straightener, then went on a “best of” spree, informed by the folks at Chowhound.

First there was a chocolate chip cannoli at Modern Pastry...

Then tiramisu at Caffe Vittoria. Tasty, but nothing transcendental.

My favorite!!! An incredible slice of Pizza at Express - incredibly gooey, salty, cheesy, with the perfect cheese-sauce-crust ratio. The only downside - they refused to serve me free water. WTF.

Then I had a carnitas burrito with guacamole from Qdoba.

I don’t even normally eat burritos when not on a diet. But I felt like it was a nice finishing touch.

I had a horrible stomach ache again after all of this. I’m working on this fat thing. It’s hard, though.

Some reflections on pageantry

Lingbo Li — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 20:32:20 +0000

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.

My first proper post-pageant meal at Peach Farm in Chinatown. I DEMOLISHED this and got a horrible stomachache.

Final makeup

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 every other contestant was going to be rail thin and super toned. Not so – the diversity of bodies on display was surprising, and I may not have been the leggiest or the blondest, but I realized after in the flesh, side by side comparison, that I should probably, you know, chill out. I have a lot be thankful for.

Thanks for all your support which is been so amazing – all the well wishes were much appreciated. I do wish, however, that I can avoid the look of disappointment on peoples’ faces when I tell them I didn’t place. I feel that I need to qualify not winning anything with a statement like, “Well, I messed up my interviews,” or note that a lot of other contestants were convinced I’d make the top 20, and this feels like cheating what little insight I’ve gained from doing this. I wish that could more eloquently convey that brief hour or two of realization after not making the top 20 that I deserved to be up there without seeming self-righteous or a sore loser.

I’m beautiful the way I am! No, honestly, I am. I hadn’t really believed it, but it finally seemed like the truth.

But losing is painful. I wonder how the other girls felt.

What fascinated me most were the girls there. While the girls in the top 20 were the kind I expected to find, the vast majority were far more interesting in their rationales of being there. A pageant, I realized, is really about the experience for some of them. It’s an opportunity to wear a pretty dress, walk down a runway, have your photo taken, and feel like a queen for two minutes. It’s a fantasy you buy.

But who am I to say that these girls don’t deserve to spend their money and feel like they’re beautiful too?

Evening gown prelim makeup

There was such a sadness to the fantasy. I came in convinced I couldn’t win, realized that I was perfectly qualified to win, and left sad I didn’t win anyway. Other girls seemed to come in not realizing the sharks they were up against. They wanted to believe they could be models, despite coming up many inches and pounds short. A lot of girls didn’t understand what it meant to be in a pageant – that there were a certain kind of shoe you wore, a certain kind of dress you buy, an entire, fairly rigid series of rituals in preparing for competition.

These questions interested me a lot more, in the end, than what it meant to be Chinese in a non-racially defined pageant. However, it’s worth noting that there was one other Asian girl there, who had won the New York title of the Miss Earth pageant, a cum laude grad from Penn with dancing awards under her belt. I felt like she was competition, and we never gravitated towards one another. She ended up making the top 20, but not going beyond that.

I’ll post some more photos later, perhaps some more thoughts, but it’s been an interesting – and utterly exhausting – journey. I’m glad to have met some fantastic people along the way, and I hope there’s bigger and better stuff in store for me.

I didn’t win! But I learned…

Lingbo Li — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:38:02 +0000

… 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:

Miss NY USA 2010 in the white dress, forget her name.

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

Lingbo Li — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:47:38 +0000

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

Lingbo Li — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:39:43 +0000

… 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. And uh, 2) groggy.

The girl right after me is a super sweet model who’s done an internship at NASA, so I hope she or my roommate wins… but we’ll see! Going to do some extra crunches beforehand for muscle definition just in case, haha.

I think three days of pageantry is definitely enough for me.

Behind the scenes at Miss New York USA, Day 2

Lingbo Li — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 05:37:51 +0000

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 evening gown.

Waiting

You watch other contestants stomp/sashay/stumble down the carpeted runway whilst the MC herds you along like the incompetent 14 year olds you are. Sometimes this is punctuated with “spontaneous” Zumba lessons, which are CLEARLY scheduled in.

Yes kids, I eventually got up and shook my butt as well. I’m no pageant killjoy. I dance backstage before we get on as well… this was particularly true yesterday as we waiting in our bikinis and 6 inch heels to parade about like a particularly well-padded dog show.

The closing number included a former Miss Connecticut singing “Turn the Beat Around” while we all clapped and tried not to fall over in our interview suits.

Speaking of the interview, it reminded me a lot of my speed dating experience, except it was speedier. We got two minutes with each judge. At least ten seconds was spent walking over and waiting for them to find out bio sheet. I accidentally frightened one by impatiently achievement-dumping him upon waiting for him to lcoate the bio sheet.

Me: SO LET ME GIVE YOU THE SHORT VERSION I’M A JUNIOR AT HARVARD AND I’VE WRITTEN INTERNATIONALLY FOR PUBLICATIONS AND I HELPED FOUND AN NGO —

Him: Ok. take a deep breath.

Me: Ok.

Him: What do you do for fun?

Me: I like to eat out. I ate bull testicles! And calves brains! There was a video!!!

I’m not sure how that went.

I chilled out after that and fared much better. Sometime I got annoyed that a judge used our precious 30 seconds to talk about themselves… because there was so little time that there was almost no time to even give my “I’m awesome!!” elevator pitch.

(And by awesome, I mean dropping the H-Bomb shamelessly. I may not have the biggest hair, or uh, biggest other parts, but my education is really old, pretentious, and expensive!)

The evening gown preliminaries went off fine, except some GIRL stepped on my dressed and ripped a piece of the bottom. It was sewn up by a chaperone, thank god.

The key with evening gown is to walk very slowly and evenly, as if you’re floating, and to radiate happiness and good will at the judges while keeping excellent posture.

I find out tomorrow during the final pageant whether I made it into the top 20 (possible!) or not. If I do, I’ll compete in evening gown and swimsuit again. If I make it into the top five (doubtful!), I’d have to answer an on stage question taken from my bio sheet.

Dear blog readers, wish me luck on my journey towards breaking racial barriers. I’m just a humble Chinese- American girl chasing this red white and blue dream. I’m an immigrant in a country built by immigrants. Boys barked at me in middle school – and it’s haunted me ever since.

You know, it’s funny that it’s taken something as shallow and somewhat dehumanizing as a beauty pageant to realize that I have many other excellent qualities other than my physical appearance or ability to speed date a judge. Like my ability to purchase stylish evening wear for only $45! Second Time Around on Boston’s Newbury St., baby.

Check it outtt.

Me and Dana, my fabulous roommate, last year's 2rd runner up!

I think I made a styling error in going for an updated retro chic feel with the red lips and hair – makeup and hair in pageantry follow a pretty exacting formula of soft mauve lip and smokey brown or purple-black eye.

Miss New York USA Day 1: Swimsuit Preliminary

Lingbo Li — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 05:19:53 +0000

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 heels – and this makes everything ok. For some reason, I was expecting a room of Barbies, and there are a few Barbie-beautiful girls (who will win this pageant), but the majority of us are just you know, normal girls.

There are definitely varying levels of pageantry experience – a former Miss New York Teen USA is competing for the Miss title, while another girl didn’t bother to go tanning or buy a trendy swimsuit or make her hair enormous. I am satisfied that I’m somewhat prepared for this whole shebang.

My beautiful roommate was last year’s 2rd runner up. We collapsed and munched on popcorn and pretzels after the swimsuit preliminary competition and watched The Sweetest Thing on TV.

This is all so happy and wholesome it is slightly ridiculous. If only Harvard were like, a giant slumber party with girls in bikinis and stripper heels. You know?

The schedule for tomorrow: interview (supposed to be really relaxed) around 10, lunch, evening gown rehearsal, then evening gown preliminary at 9pm. The actual pageant, and the announcement of the top 25, will be on Sunday.

Wish me luck guys! Here are some pics:

This is the only time in my life it seems totally appropriate to put up a photo of myself in a swimsuit… rest assured this never happens otherwise.

Lingbo gives herself skin cancer, or, tanning is fun.

Lingbo Li — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:45:47 +0000

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 Harvard.

Since then, I’ve gotten into Harvard, and as a consequence, realized that sheepskin boots are awfully comfy in snowdrifts.

But I still maintained my belief that tanning was ridiculous.

In Asia, fairness is associated with beauty. Whitening creams are a dime a dozen, and before/after photos turn dusky-skinned outcasts into milk-white, lumiscient beauties. My natural skin is neither rosy-fair, nor particularly tan, and I was fine with whatever color I happened to turn with the coming and going of the seasons.

But if you examine the taut bodies of pageant contestants, you’ll note that they are, without exception, kissed with bronze. That bronze may be natural or Mystic tan; it varies from being baked in the California rays to cooked in the confined space of a tanning bed. But the fact remains that in American beauty, darker hues are seen as the antithesis to wan sickliness, unathleticism, and frigid winters. To be tan is to be wealthy, skinny, and in good health. Bronze carries aspirations of Hamptons beachfront mansions and girls with coltish legs set off by tennis whites. Tan is rich. Tan is beautiful.

Which is how I ended up standing in Darque Tan on Huntington Ave, driven by a Groupon discount deal. The saleswoman really pushed some tanning cream on me (I realized later she was being a good salesperson and that cream is not necessary).

“Have you ever tanned before?” she asked me.

“No, never,” I admitted. I felt like a sickly impostor.

She then tried to sell me a $45 bottle of tanning cream to “accelerate and maintain” my tan.

I finally was suckered into buying a $15 mini bottle.

Tanning is very complex, with five “levels” of tanning based on strength, along with a spray tan option. She started me off on Level 3 at 11 minutes based on my propensity to burn. “The bed will start automatically in five minutes,” she said, pointing at the blinking red light on the wall. “If you want to start sooner, press the button. The radio is over there.”

I fumbled with my cream and affixed my safety eyegear. The bed suddenly turned on with the loud, insistent whir of fans and an eery blue glow. I clambered in and pulled down the top.

I immediately freaked out.

It was like being sucked into an alien space pod. All around me was a flourescent blue light. My depth perception had changed. Mild claustrophobia ensued.

I think most jarring of all was the whirring of the fans – like I was about to be sucked into a separate dimension, wearing my really scary protective mini-goggles. I took some photos and amused myself with how creepy I looked.

beam me up, scotty

After my initial fear subsided, I fiddled with the facial bulbs and fan strength. I relaxed. It was almost … fun.

The results? I noticed my tummy was a shade or two darker, and my face looked a bit irritated. After another day or two, plus another tanning session in a level 5 bed, the redness was replaced by a light coloring.

My stomach, however, really took to this tanning thing. After four sessions of tanning, it’s a dark caramel hue, like the rich roasted skin of a Thanksgiving turkey. After maxing out at 12 minutes in the Level 5 bed my final time tanning, I noticed I had gone a little too hardcore – my back had burned a bit.

What scares me most is that I actually enjoy the entire process now. There’s something relaxing about lying down, tuning out, and feeling the warmth of carcinogenic rays turning your skin into the color of privilege. Plus, the radio is set to Top 40 radio. Katy Perry sings for me.

I never wanted to succumb to Ugg boots. I felt deep unease at first about attending Harvard. Why did I have to enter into tanning?

At least I have a few more brain cells than Paris Hilton. I hope.

A Quest for Lovely Locks: stylist Gregory Wilde gives me highlights.

Lingbo Li — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 21:11:38 +0000

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 scissors. They apply foils. They make you.

Since I’m going to be judged on appearance, I wanted to put the best head of hair forward.

So I entrusted my head of coarse, dark hair to Gregory Wilde at Salon 26 in the North End, who specializes in producing the kind of long, lustrous, flowing locks that Blake Lively-wannabes can only dream of. I expressed my lifelong desire to be blonde, and he said perhaps in the future, he could do some nice light caramel coloring. But for now, he made an executive decision to give me chocolate brown highlights.

a cute, subterranean salon in the North End, a stone's throw from great red sauce Italian.

I have a lot of leftover color on the tips of my hair from dying it red, and after methodically and expertly covering my head in foils, the color on the mismatched bottom now matched the top. Then he worked some more magic with some extra shine and blowing my hair out into soft, satiny silk.

not as scary as it looks, promise.

Finally, he finished off with a GHD iron and again, magically curled my hair into voluminous waves, sprayed it with some hairspray, ruffled it for some volume, and sent me on my merry way.

Thanks, Greg, for a great salon experience. Be sure to grab him for an appointment if you can!

Dude, I’m so stressed.

Lingbo Li — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 05:11:06 +0000

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 womanhood. Different pageants also different ideals of beauty: Miss America doesn’t really look like Miss USA, for example.

The fact of the matter is, prepping for a beauty pageant is probably one of the most stressful, physically, and psychically demanding things I’ve done. Ok, so applying to college was more stressful, but it didn’t require the workout schedule or dieting, just a welling up of anxiety. The mundane nature of beauty pageant stress centers around a few things:

- Am I tan enough?
- Am I tall enough?
- Am I skinny enough?
- Am I pretty enough?
- Do I need better shoes?
- Should I shell out another $200 for colored contacts?
- Do I need a new dress?
- OMG I CAN HAZ WORLD PEACE?!

Thinking about such really inconsequential things is pretty taxing. So what if you have a paper due? You haven’t found the perfect pair of clear, 5 inch heels yet! (Just bought them, actually.) I have a sticky note on my computer with my chest-waist-hip measurements and approximate calorie counts of what I’ve eaten that day, along with reminders to myself in my inbox to buy superglue (broken earrings) and to go tanning. I still need a manicure. My heart tears up a bit every time I eat simple carbs. Etc.

I’ve been trying to do the two workouts a day routine, but this has proven pretty much impossible – I just don’t have any energy left over. On the plus side, that despicable practice of tanning has proven to pretty fun and effective at optically slimming the body. There’s just something about sitting a space pod bed of ultraviolet carcinogenic rays that is bizarrely calming and uplifting for the soul.

The first day of preliminaries is this Friday, so I only have to hold on for a few more days as I tie up loose ends. In the meantime, I’m exhausted! If you see me, feel free to give me a hug and give my stomach a poke – my abs have become a steel reserve.

Not all beautiful women are stupid

Lingbo Li — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 04:54:28 +0000

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 for her MBA at Columbia. She’s also ambitious: she’s working to become a financial journalist. With her looks and brains, she could be the next Maria Bartiromo – the Asian Money Honey!

I reread my post and realized that my abstract musings on my childhood insecurities sounded an awful lot like I was bashing pageants… which I’m not! My somewhat irrational desire to become a Barbie doll, brainlessness included, is not to suggest that beauty queens are airheaded – clearly, many are extremely accomplished in their own rights, beyond looking pretty and knowing how to walk in heels. The point I was trying to make is that I sometimes wish I could shut my brain off and just enjoy life, without overanalzying things.

In the words of Barbie herself, “Math is hard!” (Or in my life, “Linguistic response papers are tough!”)

The treadmill is going to eat me alive.

The food blogger’s guilt

Lingbo Li — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:10:51 +0000

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 sensibilities and brief aspirations of pageantry. As it turns out, nothing much really. The only thing that really changes is the conversations around my food and not so much the food itself (perhaps boding poorly for my chances). I just end up talking about my need to diet rather than dieting. I’ve never been one to deny myself anything. A little bit of cake can’t hurt! Sure, go for that extra bowl of soup!

And if you put something in front of me that I’ve never tried before, well, just hand me a bowl and spoon.

I had a great conversation over tea yesterday afternoon with Alison Cronin, the reigning Miss Massachusetts USA 2009 who is, contrary to any ditzy stereotypes about beauty queens, very friendly in an accessible, normal kind of way. She posssesed a wry, self-aware sense of humor and gave me a few great tips: speedwalking, wearing nude or clear shoes during the swimsuit competition, and figuring out my strong points.

As for her own diet and exercise regime before Miss USA, she describes it as a lot of light protein and veggies. “I ate a lot of sushi,” she said. “Sashimi.” And two hours of elliptical and speedwalking a day.

Well, I can try.

Alison Cronin