In the past several months I feel like I have had an overload of watching gay beauty pageants to my immense satisfaction. In this aspect I consider myself luckier than most since I am invited to be a judge, I often get part of the nicest seats in the house and the best view of the stage and the candidates. Though I am gay in the happy sense of it, I also have friends who are gay and have worked well with gays.
I sometimes think that a gay beauty pageant is the most anticipated event in a barrio or town fiesta, a staple of the festivities. Such pageants have a great following and fill venues to the brim.
What takes place is usually one of two things: either the local gays (I call them badinglets or budding badings) will flock to join the pageant if its open only to residents, in which case you are most likely to see your parlorista or saleslady or gay high school students, or the transvestites from out-of-town will travel to your place if its an open competition, and you will most likely encounter the retokadas (with boob or butt enhancements or sometimes have undergone sex change operations) with their nearly flawless complexions and sexy bodies. In both cases, you are most likely to find out that they could be prettier than females.
An ordinary person would find gay beauty pageants an endless source of amusement as they could just laugh at or boo at the candidates. However, gay pageants in themselves are beautiful things for several reasons.
One reason why I love to watch gay beauty pageants is that the contestants are often smart, better than your average girl beauty pageant candidate. The last time I watched Miss Gay Fernandino, most of the finalists answered the final question in almost perfect and fluent English. And even if they had to speak in Kapampangan at times, they were able to express themselves really well. This seldom happens in your ordinary pageants. Even at the Binibining Pilipinas this year, Janina San Miguel made an unnecessary fool of herself during the question and answer portion because of her language skills (or the lack of it).
In the past three years that I have been watching or organizing local pageants, I have always felt a little disappointed in the talent portions because of the seeming lack of talent of candidates or the failure to highlight a contestant’s true talent. I have seen several versions of the aborted baby’s monologue, endless interpretations of Kapampangan songs that fail to do justice to ArtiSta. Rita’s world class rendition or the playing of musical instruments that are out of tune by players who are out of practice.
However, gay beauty pageants never run out of talent because gays are almost always very creative. At the King’s Royale Goddess Pageant, I had a hard time choosing a best in talent from among a bevy of ballerinas, dance choreographers, and performers. It was also very difficult to choose a best in festival costume because I thought that each creation was intricately crafted and beautifully executed. And since they make the gowns for themselves or for their friends, I did not expect anything less than grand and gorgeous.
But more than just being funny and worthwhile, gay beauty pageants show us the good things that gays share to us in society. Here we meet gays who are also doing their share in becoming good citizens, who participate in the battle against global warming, and who have dreams and wishes to make the world a whole lot better too. For homopohobics or discriminating people, pageants like this could open a window of enlightenment to one of the world’s most marginalized sectors.
More than just being a celebration of gayness, gay pageants are avenues for upholding equal rights for all genders of society. Our country is more tolerating than most. But tolerance is not the end all or be all of the fight for equal gender rights. I guess we could simply start watching gay pageants and start accepting these happy people in our midst.
