The Ugly Side of Beauty–Pageants & Pepper Spray

With the biggest pageant on Earth–Miss World- happening tomorrow night and the recent publicity about the antics of pageant conestants plastered all over the news, I had to add my two cents. First, I am posting the article which inspired the blog and then the actual blog will follow. Enjoy!

Pageant officials investigate pranks pulled on Miss Puerto Rico Universe 2008

By Rebecca Banuchi, The Associated Press

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Beauty pageant organizers were investigating Sunday who doused a contestant’s evening gowns with pepper spray and spiked her makeup, causing her to break out in hives.

Beauty queen Ingrid Marie Rivera beat 29 rivals to become the island’s 2008 Miss Universe contestant, despite applying makeup and wearing evening gowns that had been coated with pepper spray, pageant spokesman Harold Rosario said.

Rivera was composed while appearing before cameras and judges throughout the competition. But once backstage, she had to strip off her clothes and apply ice bags to her face and body, which swelled and broke out in hives twice.

“We thought at first it was an allergic reaction, or maybe nerves,” Rosario said. “But the second time, we knew it couldn’t have been a coincidence.”

Rivera’s clothing and makeup later tested positive for pepper spray.

Someone also stole Rivera’s bag containing her gowns, makeup and credit cards. And a bomb threat forced pageant officials to postpone the last day of competition Thursday, said Magali Febles, director of the Miss Puerto Rico Universe pageant.

Pageant organizers said the hoped to catch and expose whoever was responsible for the pranks. They said, however, they were handling the investigation themselves and police are not involved.

Beauty competitions in the U.S. Caribbean territory - which boasts five Miss Universe titles, second only to the U.S. - are fierce, drawing boisterous audiences and accusations of rigged results.

But the pranks under investigation this year are a first, Rosario said.

Rivera, who won Miss World Caribbean in 2005, had been a target of controversy from the start of competition, as rivals complained she was too experienced and should be disqualified.

Local media touted her as the likely winner, stoking jealousy among contestants, Rosario said.

When Rivera won, rivals accused her of buying the crown, Puerto Rico’s El Nuevo Dia newspaper reported.

A tearful Rivera recounted her ordeal at a news conference Sunday, acknowledging she had wavered about staying in the contest.

“At one point I said, ‘Am I a masochist?’ ” she recalled, her voice breaking. “But I said, ‘I am with God and this is my goal, regardless of the results.’ ”

The Ugly Side of Beauty–Pageants & Pepper Spray

Those of who you who know me, know that beauty pageants are my obsession and the point of reference for my persona, Martina Diamante. Every time a beauty pageant comes on the tube, I am glued to it. Don’t call me, talk to me, or bother me while a pageant is on-air if you don’t want to die, LOL! I hoop and holler, scream and shout, and do all the dramatics that you fellas do when watching the Super Bowl. I record them and sometimes when I need inspiration or get bored, I’ll watch and study them.

Unfortunately, I think pageants reached their pinnacle in the 90’s. The level of production was exquisite and it was much easier to discern the quality of the contestants. I was usually always able to predict who would be in the top 3 or 5 and pick the winner. Now, it does seem a lot more focused on T&A (at least in Miss USA/Universe), more commercial, the production is streamlined (too sreamlined IMO) and the selection process leaves me scratching my head.

Thanks, Donald Trump.

But, as you can read from the article above, there is often more drama going on backstage then there is onstage. Everything you hear about the cattiness, the gossipping, the ugly stares, the flaring tempers is true. When I first started competing, I heard horror stories of glass being ground-up and put in makeup powder, razors being taken to dresses, gowns and costumes mysteriously disappearing, etc. I’ve witnessed contestants fighting other contestants, judges, backstage helpers, and pageant promoters. I’ve been in the dressing room when someone who lost peppersprayed the bar and the air vents because they were mad.

The second time I competed in Miss National, a contestant who shall remain nameless monopolized the time of my costume designers (who were also helping her) so much that half of my garments were unfinished by the start of the pageant. To top it off, she made some agreement with the Rialto Theatre so that she could set the floor aflame for her act. Her friends had to use fire extinguishers, of course, to put out the fire but didn’t do such a great job of cleaning it up. So every contestant following her suddenly had to do ice capades for their talents. My poor sister Victoria feel flat on her face and when she got up had fire extinguisher foam on her dress for the rest of her talent! But Karma is a good bitch because not only did that contestant get her due, but she was called 4th Runner-up and I was called 3rd. Watch the tape to see the look I gave that bitch when I walked up and accepted my trophy.

Normally, I don’t even indulge myself to do that crap, but she deserved it. The clincher is when we got the scores, she and I were tied numerically but they placed me higher than her. Now you really know why she doesn’t too much feature me. And before you go running back to tell her, there ain’t no tea. This is my blog and I’m writing about my experiences just as she writes on her blog and talks about her experiences. Boom!

Oh, well. That’s all I have to say about that.

I am not one of those people who will do anything to win a pageant, especially if it means hurting or stifling someone else to do it. If I win, I want to know I beat your ass fair and square and that you were on your A game when I did it. My Miss National sister Cezanne said something to the contestants before her stepdown that has stuck with me: “You’re not in competition with each other, you’re in competition with yourself. It’s so much more important to be the best that you can be, not better than anyone else.”

Preach on, bitch!

When I compete and even when I perform for a show, I ain’t got time to be worried about what the bitch next to me is doing. I’m focusing on my performance. I’m not sitting there sizing you up or staring you up and down. I don’t have anything to envy of any bitch. I can do anything anyone else does, but no one else can do what I do. And that’s really all that needs to be said. So many competitors in drag or anything else competitive lose before it even starts because they spend too much time worrying about keeping up with the Joneses instead of focusing on themselves

Although I’m not a person who will do anything to win a pageant, I will perservere and overcome the obstacles that I have encountered in order to win. One year at Continental, someone obviously paid a friend who had backstage access to come back there and try to rattle my nerves by trying to break my concentration. Even after I politely asked her to get out of my face.

Didn’t work. Keep stirring your drink, bitch!

At Black America, one of the contestants tried to be funny and psych me out by asking me if I was the girl that (insert blunders) at (insert contests).

Good strategy! I’m sure she got a nice view of my ass when they called me out for top 5 and she was left standing.

The year I won Miss National was a doozy. I wasn’t even going to compete at Miss National that year but was begged (yes, begged) to do the last prelim less than a month before the finals. I made my mind up that if I didn’t win the preliminary, I wasn’t going to the finals. Well, I won. So now, I’m stuck going and have no time to get ready.

The week of the pageant, I sent what was supposed to be my presentation dress to the cleaners. When I got the dress back, it looked like it had been laid out in the street, run over a million times, and set on fire. I guess someone who had it in for me or someone who was friends with one of the contestants did the job. Luckily, I wasn’t the one who picked it up from the cleaners or else I would be in the clink this very moment.

But a sharp bitch always has plan B. I ended up using another one of my dresses which was great but because we decided at the very last minute what and how my presentation was going to work, I had no time to REHEARSE the presentation. The night of the pageant, my presentation was done completely on the fly. The Lord had to be smiling down on me because if you got to see it, you would have thought it had been rehearsed a million times. The back of my costume wasn’t even finished, so I couldn’t turn around at all, LOL!

We decided I needed to wear a new gown for the contest. The gown I bought had to be altered and reconfigured but we ran out of time so it was also not finished the exact way that I envisioned it and the length was too short when I got it the day of the pageant. So when I was standing outside waiting to go onstage, we decided to break the heels off of my shoes so that I wouldn’t be docked off. I had to model my evening gown standing on my tippy-toes with no heels on my shoes. Now, I’m sure some people in the audience on the side of the stage caught what was going on but dead-on, you couldn’t catch it. And dead-on where the judges are looking at you is ultimately the only view that counts.

Needless to say, when you’re backstage, you can’t see what’s going on and you’re too busy preparing yourself to be worried about it. The frontrunner that year fell apart on final night but I had no idea of it. So when they called her out as 1st runner-up at coronation, I was crushed…and puzzled. I was simultaneously thinking, “Damnit, this is my last fucking year competing, I didn’t even make the 5!” and “Well, if she got 1st runner-up, who the hell won?”

And the rest is history…

It’s a damn shame that my mascara didn’t even have time to dry before folks took the opportunity to smack the taste of victory out of my mouth. I feel for Miss Puerto Rico because I’ve been there. Lemme’ rephrase that, LOL! I feel for her because I’ve been in similar situations like she is dealing with now. Who in their right mind would mace herself in the middle of a pageant to garner sympathy? Other contestants and pageant followers were complaining that she was too “experienced” because of her 3rd place finish at Miss World in 2005. Now, you would think that a “country” (Puerto Rico is actually a U.S. Territory) that has had the level of success it has at pageants would WANT to send somebody who has the experience and goods to win Miss Universe!!! But this scandal shows how petty people can be and what lengths people will go through to keep a good bitch down. Evidently it backfired because now she’s appearing all over international television gaining exposure and making her the one to beat come May in Vietnam. And the bitch is sickening, hello?!!!

I, for one, think she will be vindicated after the investigation and I hope she wins. Go Puerto Rico!

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