Miss Universe 2005

Melina, Zed and I packed onto my bed to watch Miss Universe last night. I remember doing this with my aunt when I was ten years old! Back then, the girls had "talents" - I especially remember us snarking at the hog callers, lassoo artists, and baton twirlers - and they wore those soviet-quality Catalina swimsuits built around girdles.

This year the biggest sport was trying to decide which girls had breast implants and surgical tweaking of their faces. We've been studying at awfulplasticsurgery.com.

The native costumes were fantastic and surprising. They were native, not to any actual community or country, but to the Las Vegas, Paris, and Hollywood girly shows of past eras. We loved them but they whizzed by far too fast. They reminded me happily of the days when "state costumes" of the Miss America contest had fruits and maps glued onto them.

The evening gowns, many slit up to the crotch, seemed to have been concocted by one mind, a mind with a preference for sickly pale shades of yellow and lime.

We were appalled to see that almost all the many, many judges were white, and that most of the contestants were white, and that all the finalists were white. White, white, white. Very few contestants from Africa, and of those, Miss South Africa was a blond. The girls from Latin America, who dominated the finals, were also white white white. Melina: "I thought we got past this a long time ago."

The short host kept trying to point out to us that he was a heterosexual, I'm not sure why he thought we cared. He seemed to have a lot of botox in his forehead - nothing happened when he raised his eyebrows. His blond co-pilot had a nasty, nasal voice and her dress had a sports-bra quality to it. At least it wasn't chartreuse.

I didn't know that Thailand could look so much like Las Vegas. I guess the point was to show us that luxury resorts were ready to take our money again after the disaster of the tsunami, which was mentioned briefly just before a commercial break so you could, at that point, decide to meditate on misery or watch a lady get migraine relief, your choice.

Here you can see a picture of a couple of the girls, captioned: "Miss Universe 2005 delegates appear in bikinis before sacred Buddhist temple, triggering anger and red faces."

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