I was a hardcore tomboy growing up in Mississippi in the ’90s. Boy haircut, no dresses, zero interest in looking “girlie.” The South is known for big hair bows and smocked dresses, but I wanted nothing to do with it. My parents, liberal white Episcopalian baby boomers, didn’t force the issue. I flat-out refused to wear dresses for years, and instead of fighting me on it, my grandmother sewed me custom two-piece outfits, little shirt-and-pants sets that were the tomboy equivalent of a church dress. Bless her.
I may have been a tiny tomboy, but I was extremely into dolls. My best friend and I spent hours playing with Barbies and American Girl dolls. My fashion sense didn’t align with my interests, but we all contain multitudes. I wasn’t just anti-dress, I was militant about it. According to family lore, I once told that same best friend (who I’d met in the church nursery when we were toddlers) that I couldn’t be friends with her if she didn’t stop wearing “those hideous bows.” Her mom, who was also a close family friend, sat me down and very firmly let me know that her daughter could wear whatever she wanted and I didn’t have to like it. That settled that. I’m now the godmother to her child. Apparently, the bows didn’t break us.
With all that context in mind, it may come as a shock to learn that just a few years later, in high school, I ended up in a beauty pageant in exchange for two 100 test grades in AP English.
Nothing captures the spirit of Mississippi public schools quite like that sentence.
By my teen years, I’d come to love fashion, even dresses. I still wasn’t a girly girl, but I was experimenting with style. So when my AP English teacher (who was also the longtime director of our high school’s annual co-ed beauty pageant) offered a bribe, it worked like a charm.
The offer was compelling: participate in the pageant, and she’d give you two perfect test grades. No essay required. No exam. Just layer on the makeup, smile, and walk across the stage.
It was called Beauty and Beau, and she took it very seriously. Full-on glam: stage lights, floor-length gowns from the local dress shop, teased hair, and absolutely no talent portion. Pure vanity. Unsurprisingly, participation rates were high.
And yes, it was co-ed. Boys wore tuxedos and escorted girls onstage, but the real focus was on the presentation of feminine beauty. Even as teenagers, we all knew the pageant was a performance of traditional gender roles, dressed up in sequins and Southern charm. It was also completely absurd.
Aside from gymnastics recitals, I’d never worn sequins on stage. But I signed up for the extra credit without hesitation. There were dress fittings. There were heels. My hair was up-doed to the gods. I wish I could say someone slathered me in bronzer, but I was still a couple of years out from discovering the spray tan.
I didn’t win. I don’t even remember who did. That wasn’t the point. The point was the sheer spectacle of it all. The fantasy of beauty. The performance of perfection.
Just for one night. Just for the 100 test grades. Totally worth it.
That’s public school in the South for you. Sometimes it’s underfunded and chaotic, and sometimes it’s handing out test grades like candy if you’re willing to curl your hair and smile for the judges.
By the time I got to college (at a small liberal arts school out of state), it became very clear, very quickly, that I had not been academically prepared.
What do you mean Beauty and Beau didn’t prepare me to compete with my boarding school–educated peers?
There’s a particular kind of whiplash in being labeled “gifted and talented” your whole life, only to show up to college feeling like you’ve been dropped into an advanced seminar in a language you don’t even speak. Oh wait, turns out, that literally happened.
It’s not that I couldn’t learn, I could. It’s just that from kindergarten through graduation, school felt more like nonstop social hour than an academic experience. I had an absolute blast growing up in Mississippi public schools, which rank dead last in the country, but probably score pretty high when it comes to cutting up in class.
It’s not that we weren’t learning anything. It’s just that a lot of the learning was happening outside the syllabus.
Eventually, I caught up in college. I was never a star student, but I found my way. I’m fairly certain I only survived French because my professor took pity on me and begged my roommate to offer extra tutoring.
But while I might’ve been underprepared academically, I was over prepared in other ways. I knew how to talk to anyone. I knew how to fake confidence and keep a straight face while navigating absolute chaos.
I also came with a deep appreciation for the absurd, a healthy sense that the world is strange and funny and full of people doing their best with what they’ve got. And while I’ve long since left the world of beauty pageants behind, I’ll never stop being grateful for the weird, wild, deeply Southern education that raised me.
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