<i>Beauty Queens</i> (review)
2011; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 64; Issue: 10 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/bcc.2011.0434
ISSN1558-6766
Autores Tópico(s)Gender, Feminism, and Media
ResumoReviewed by: Beauty Queens Karen Coats Bray, Libba . Beauty Queens. Scholastic, 2011. [400p]. ISBN 978-0-439-89597-2 $18.99 Reviewed from galleys R* Gr. 7-10. Miss Delaware is dead. So are Miss Maryland, Miss Florida, Miss Vermont—in fact, only fifteen of the Miss Teen Dream contestants survive the plane crash that kills their pilots, chaperones, and film crew and strands them on an island off the coast of Florida. But no need to head to the "bummer basement," says Miss Texas, who is ready to take charge and see to it that the survivors stay perky and prepared until help arrives. Her chief competition is Miss New Hampshire, who insists that finding food and water is more important than maintaining pageant skills, but soon the girls (including one transgender contestant) are working together to turn their remaining beauty products into water filtration systems (sequined gowns make great strainers), weapons (tummy-control undergarments are super for launching projectiles), and other island necessities. Nefarious forces are lining up against the girls, however, since they have crashed onto an island belonging to the Corporation that owns the pageant—and that is involved in an illegal arms deal with an eccentric dictator. Rescue of the girls would expose their operation, but public execution of the pageanteers by soldiers posing as the dictator's forces would shift sympathy to the side of the Corporation and sweeten the deal by enabling a full-scale coup that would open up whole new markets for the Corporation's products (advertised in mini-commercials throughout the book). A full-scale send-up of consumer culture, beauty pageants, and reality television, this wacky adventure full of man-eating snakes, hallucinogenic fruit, exploding beauty products, and reality-show pirates does what good satire does: it makes readers really examine their own values while they are cringing, laughing, and shaking their heads at the hyperbolic absurdity of those values gone seriously awry. Meanwhile, there's a strong statement about girl power that sets this in a trippy conversation with Lord of the Flies; readers will come for the twisted fun and walk away with a whole banquet of questions. Copyright © 2011 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
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