Seeing the World Through Innocent Eyes
It’s so wonderful to see things you never think twice about through the wide-eyed innocence of someone experiencing things for the first time. The laughter, the bright eyes, the derisive laughter… ah, good times. Yep, I’m referring to living with a foreigner from a primitive and culture free country like Great Britain. A country without a stately and refined tradition like our own Mrs. America.
Yep, Maggie channel-surfed into the Mrs. America contest tonight. I knew I was in for something interesting when she called out “I’ve found something dreadful to watch!”. Really, my first thought was that she’d hit something on the Sci-Fi Channel. Maggie does hate science fiction, but I quickly decided that a bit of Star Trek wouldn’t really merit an announcement. We had Mrs. America… another example of American weirdness that gives Maggie so much fodder for stand-up comedy and general snarkiness.
“How long has this been going on?”, she wanted to know. I guessed the 70s. A quick Google search confirmed a 1977 debut for this institution. I felt oddly proud that I’d guessed this correctly. Yep, I just knew that something like Mrs. America was a product of that worst of all decades. It was a time when people still cared enough to protest the Miss America pageant as degrading to women, instead of simply forgetting that it still exists, like we do today. Some bright spark of that earth-toned era decided that married women also deserved their chance to be judged like pigs at a state fair. (A side thought: Wouldn’t it make a great story for a woman to enter the contest under the threat of death if she didn’t win… and with the help of a brilliant and sympathetic spider and her barnyard friends, go on to become famous? Or has something like that been done?).
Anyway, Maggie is appalled but unable to look away. We’ve been watching, and it’s freaking hilarious. There’s a fashion show featuring outfits representing each State. Who knew Georgia was the poultry capital of the world? I didn’t, until a woman dressed as an egg wandered down the runway. Mrs. New York came out as a Big Apple, which strikes me as a fantastic way to hide massive hips. Mrs. Maine dressed as an honest-to-God moose, albeit a moose wearing a brown one-piece bathing suit and furry boots. My biggest disappointment was that Mrs. Utah didn’t dress as 8 women, representing the illustrious tradition of polygamy. Oh well, maybe next year (another side note: Maggie wanted that joke but I wouldn’t give it to her).
The whole thing seemed to be presented by Trimspa, who gave an award to the woman with the most compelling weight loss story (Mrs. New York, who probably won for shedding that dumpy apple outfit). Yep, nothing says beauty pageant like unhealthy weight-loss products.
Sadly, once the swimsuit competition began and the cheesy jokes from the presenters kicked in (one appears to be Omarosa from The Apprentice, actually saying “you’re fired” to the surprise of no one), things simply got mundane. So we’ve turned it off and are off for the boring married early-to-bed Saturday night.
The Family Guy once declared the Lifetime Network “Television for Idiots.” This was on the WE Network. Watch your back, Lifetime, you’ve got some serious competition.
