Beyond the Books

Last night when my eyes had gotten tired of reading, my slow TV remote took me to a place I had not been to in decades, The Miss America Pageant.  Luckily I didn’t wander in until the end of the night. I was like watching the car wreck on the side of the road. You know that you don’t really want to see that burned into your memory but there is something in us that wants to look. 

During the first click through the stations I heard the voice of Miss Alabama explain her belief that looking and feeling sexy was a wonderful thing. This wisdom is coming in a voice over as the curvy young woman strutted the catwalk in her evening gown. I tried to find something on the other channels but finally clicked back under the task of sociological research. It wasn’t toddlers and tiaras but I could see the similarities.  When I switched back I got glimpses of several of the talent performances for the last bunch of finalist.  I watched the young women do bits of Swan Lake on point, an Irish dance, several modern jazz numbers - Dancing with the Stars sort things, singers, operatic singers and pianists. I wondered at what point in their young lives did they worry about developing their “talent”.  I mean when did they figure that the equestrian sports or soccer skills that they were pursuing would not translate well to the contest stage. Were these very beautiful young women always on this track or did they find it later in life? Okay, one girl’s mother had been a Miss America so I was thinking it may have appeared on her radar pretty early on.

I have read the reports that viewership for all the Pageants has been slowly tanking over the years. As glitzy has all the lights and special effects, it didn’t look nearly as glamorous as it did to that child I was back in the 50’s and 60’s.  But the public can see underweight young women in beautiful formal gowns on whatever Award show is running the red carpet this week. We can all catch America’s Got Talent and find better skills. We won’t even have to be distracted by the print running across the bottom of the scream telling them that Miss “wherever” wants to travel in outer space one day. And these young women are well schooled to appreciate the marketing and “brand” of “the organization.” Several in their final one on one question and answer opportunity made it quite clear that they thought their question was very important and they were pleased to work to allow others to make good decisions for themselves…but they had to remember that they were representing “the organization.” I suppose learning to be PC and "vague speak" is a life skill.

The night before, I had watched the last segment of the Friday night evening news. The segment told of a young teenage girl in California that had gotten interested in cancer research and started hanging around the University laboratory. Well the short story is that she discovered a new experimental treatment for cancer. Testing has shown it to be effective in mice and they are expecting good results in humans. I understood the drawings of the cells and cancer and how the medicine was delivered but don’t ask me to explain with technical words. She went on to enter her discovery in the National Science Fair competition. She won. She gets a scholarship, too, I bet. She is an only child and it seems that she found her talents early. Still in high school she is interested in anything in science, chemistry, physics, mathematics and biology and probably a few sciences that are above my study level.  Looking at her sitting in class with her peers, science discovery girl appears to be another very good-looking, healthy young woman.  She also did not appear worried that her intelligence might interfere with her dating. I bet she would look very nice in a formal when she wants to go dancing.