Queen of Queens: The Disenchantment

Written by Akshay Kothari

There were eleven heavily made-up girls on the makeshift stage under bright lights. Below and all around them, a mass of people were crammed together, trying to get a good look (and in most cases, a good drink as well). Disco strobe lights flashed, music blared and the party was on.         The Seventeen Magazine's Queen of Queens pageant was held at St. James Power Station on the 15th of December and was billed as the ultimate pageant for beauty queens from local tertiary institutions.         On stage were the winners of the campus-wide beauty pageants from the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM), Singapore Management University (SMU), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and yours truly, National University of Singapore (NUS).         The contestants paraded up and down the catwalk to cheers and catcalls from the audience. Each girl had her fair share of supporters and each successive contestant in the line-up appeared to be just as popular as the ones introduced before and after her.         There was no denying that all of them seemed to possess an adequate amount of poise and beauty to warrant their inclusion in the pageant line-up and be perceived as serious contenders for the top prize. The pageant was off to a promising start.         That is, of course, until the true litmus test of their individual personalities was initiated - the highly anticipated question and answer (Q & A) segment.         The Q & A segment is an integral part of any beauty contest. It is an avenue for pageant organizers to righteously defend the prestige and allure of their pageants against the claims of naysayers who liken the pageants to superficial skin fests. It can serve as a tie-breaker or a decisive score segment in the entire pageant for judges who make an attempt to unearth the personality behind the pretty faces lined up in front of them.         Pageant contestants, on the other hand, can leverage on this segment to outdo their equally or more attractive peers in the contest. Of course, most importantly, the audience in the pageant will be able to distinguish between the beauties with the brains and the Zoolander equivalents.         Soon, it became apparent that we were going to witness more Zoolander-esque moments than we had the patience to stomach.         One of the girls was asked "What is the hardest decision you've ever made?".         Her bland and nondescript reply, "Matters of the heart complicate things" (or something to that effect), sounded suspiciously like a direct translation from a dialogue in one of the many weepy Korean drama serials.         She went on to elaborate that breaking off a floundering relationship was the most difficult decision she ever made, which to us, probably meant that she hadn't experience much in life.         The other questions and their accompanying answers were no less vacuous. Many of the girls failed to answer the question posed to them directly, and instead, rambled on about something else entirely, in a mediocre attempt to impress.         Thankfully, the noise drowned out most of the answers. Oh, the wonder of small miracles.         There were also stage games as the emcees attempted to liven up the atmosphere of the pageant by pulling two men and women from the pool of the contestants' supporters onstage and tasked the men with applying make-up on the women. This activity probably precipitated the only highlight of the evening, which occurred when one of the guys accidentally poked the girl in the eye whilst trying to apply eyeliner. Well, at least that was funny.         The pageant ended with Ms Elle Seow from SMU being crowned the winner. The prizes were make-up accessories and ironically, Wall's Ice-Cream vouchers. Considering how svelte the winners were, we doubt ice-cream features prominently in their diets.         The pageant itself ended at 10 pm, as the lights were dimmed, the stage dismantled and the contestants were told to sit back and enjoy the party, which was, by our way of thinking, an extremely polite way of telling them that their moment was over and they could (to use Irish slang) sod off.         In the aftermath of the pageant, the contestants were scattered around the club, guzzling their alcoholic beverages with a zest that was nowhere to be seen during the contest itself. They stayed on till about 2 am, whereupon some of them staggered out assisted by friends. The sight of their slack-jawed, glassy-eyed drunkenness dispelled any remaining illusions the audience might have had about their attractiveness.         The pageant must have been an interesting experience for the contestants, though the same could not be said for those watching it. Oh well, at least the after-party was fun. HOOKED Images courtesy of: http://www.seventeen.com.sg/queenofqueens/vote.html Comments Write Comment Name: Guest Title: Comment:

 

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