A Few Good Memes

Alyssa got a letter in the mail this weekend addressed to “The Daughter of Anna Dufair”. It appeared to be hand addressed. She opened it up and it turned out to be an invitation for her to be in a beauty contest. Yep. A beauty contest. Being reflexively repelled by the idea of Alyssa going the JonBenet route and living with the illusion that my kids just naturally absorb my generally progressive values by osmosis, I assumed she’d look at it and it would go in the recycle bin. Imagine my sheer joy when she announces that she wants to participate in said beauty contest.

Now, I’m not the type to just outright ban something that doesn’t put my kids in immediate danger. I think it creates the Salman Rushdie effect. I’d rather discuss, investigate, and gently guide them toward the only right way of doing things: my way. So I decided it was time to take this as a learning opportunity. Sometimes life’s gifts come in unexpected packages.

I’m about as informed on beauty pageants as I am on, say, the Lvov-Sandomierz Offensive. So I read the pamphlet. It’s cleverly engineered to pull at every insecurity a girl can have. Make friends! (You don’t have many now, do you?) Show your pride! (You’re not one of those insecure girls, are you?) Get ahead in life! (Or are you a loser?) They even play lip service to the deepest fear of every progressive parent: No makeup allowed on participants under 12! Except that every photo of every child of every age in the pamphlet was wearing makeup. And the entry fee is a mere $440. They provide many helpful hints on how to raise that entry fee. Ask local businesses to sponsor you, for example. They neglected to mention a plea to the blogosphere.

What I’d like to do is have Alyssa come to the type of understanding that Amanda Angelotti did when she re-entered the pageant world after a progressive-politics epiphany in late high school: “And I remembered the subtle dishonesty of it all.” I guess that’s the rub. Subtlety is a bit lost on 9 year olds. So I’ve decided to take the Zen approach and counter subtle with subtle. We got a copy of Little Miss Sunshine, the best movie I’ve seen in quite a while. There’s plenty of swearing and other adult themes in it, so we’re watching it together and talking about it. Hopefully the vapidity of the average contestant will impress upon her and demotivate.

She said she wants to be in the spotlight and to hear her name called. That’s pretty understandable, for sure. I’ve encouraged her to get involved in community theatre in the past. Perhaps it’s time to push that one again. Dear readers, I’m open to other suggestions of how to navigate these piranha-infested waters with a minimum of blood loss. Where’s Anna when I need her?

If all else fails, I guess we’re going to have to work something up for “Superfreak”.

(Seconds, mere seconds after the beauty pageant discussion wraps up, “Dad, is the tooth fairy real?”)