And now here comes Miss Ex-Cabinet! Her hair is long, smoothly blown out, and blond-ish! She is wearing a sensible dress! (Well, naturally: It's Ottawa.) Look as she takes a spin in front of the microphone and talks a bunch of politician-speak! What talent! What promise! Watch as she takes to the slopes in her sunglasses and skis with that goofy, always-game TV host, Rick Mercer! What a gal! Go ahead, fawn over her. Check her out! The world likes a pretty face in the dreary corridors of government.
Until she falls on it, that is.
I'm beginning to think that the story of Helena Guergis, the embattled MP and former Miss Huronia who was forced to leave her status-of-women portfolio in Stephen Harper's cabinet last week, could be the latest segment in a series called Bonfire of the Tiaras: The Ambition! The Folly! The Controversy!
The first part of the series would be about Sarah Palin, of course. The former Governor of Alaska and Republican candidate for vice-president is also a woman who knows a thing or two about cheesy smiles, big hair and cheap, slinky sashes. Miss Wasilla in 1984, she went on to become the first runner-up in the Miss Alaska Pageant. Everything she's done since seems explained by that one fact of her youth. She's wacky. She doesn't read serious newspapers, does she? Naw, couldn't be! She's fearless. She says stupid things. Sees Russia from her window, ha! She comes up with reality show ideas as easily as she conceives children. She's vain. Well, of course - she was a beauty queen contestant.
You'd think by reading the coverage of these two female politicians that participation in beauty pageants is tantamount to bank robbery - a sign of character flaw, lack of brains (ditto judgment) and a portent of doom, the first stop of a train wreck. If the allegations against Ms. Guergis, 41, are proven true, then we should criticize her for that. She's fair game. But snicker over her beauty-pageant past?
Whenever it's revealed that a female politician was once a beauty queen contestant, their pageant photos, now faded, are dutifully reproduced. It's as if they're shown to affirm the unspoken cultural belief that a smart woman can't be a pretty one. Conventional wisdom would have it that if, by luck of genes, she's pretty, she would still ignore her physical attributes if she's serious. What girl would be interested in hairstyles if she has brains? What girl would subject herself to parading around in a skimpy bathing suit if she had any self-respect?
It was this sort of reasoning that accompanied reports about Ms. Guergis's dogged pursuit of the Miss Huronia crown in 1992. She entered the contest three times before she reached her goal. But how could she mince around in high heels and then, in the next breath, work as a crisis volunteer for rape victims and march in Barrie's Take Back the Night rally? Isn't that a conflict of character?
Let me analyze that while I go get a manicure.
The fact of the matter is that beauty pageants are an opportunity to get noticed; to be somebody at a young age; to get ahead. If you're beautiful, what's wrong with using it? Athletes use their physical prowess. Scholars flaunt their talents. Ambitious men (and women) boast about their accomplishments, easing them into every conversation.
That Ms. Palin and Ms. Guergis were both beauty contestants says three very simple things.
They're ambitious; they're opportunistic; and they're vain. Which is why politics was so perfect for them, despite how their careers ended.