The Crumbling Facade of American Beauty

It was apparent by the time that they announced the final 15 contestants in Miss USA pagent, the overall mood backstage at the live broadcast of the event would take a gruesome and somewhat surreal turn. It began with a conversation; Miss Florida was busy munching down a series of chocolate chip cookies as if to signal in a final fit of despair that all the effort and work she had spent the past year, quite possibly her entire life had been cast into the fire of failure. Miss Florida showed no shame, fear, or self consciousness in her new ambition to live her life in the next few hours like an other college aged woman her age. The dismissed group of 36 women exhumed an overall feeling of collective army of beings raised on positive reinforcement, outright praise, and near deity like worship for their beauty pagent quality, but on this ultimate American stage of scurtiny their smalltown hopes only served as more trash residue for the cleaning staff later in the evening. About a dozen woman ran crying in various directions, looking for any dark corner to console their wounded pride.

I found the spartan like quality to the immidiate elimation process very reflective of America's overall nature towards hyperactive scrutiny and judgement to compartive elements that only truely exist in the make believe world of Hollywood. None of these words would have help this cadre of ladies who double over heaving, writhering in spasms, gasping for breath, as if violated, raped, and let in on the punchline of some cruel joke at their expense, left to drowned in humilation of the capacity audience in the building as well as the viewing audience at home, only to further add to this tsunami of disgrace the women had to quickly change into their swimsuits, then parade themselves out to the invisible