Beautiful

Tonight, I heard of the passing of former Miss USA 2019, Cheslie Kryst. To start, I want to send my deepest condolences to her family and loved ones. 

Undoubtedly, this is an enormous loss for the entire pageant community, but just an enormous loss in general, as Cheslie was a person before she was a titleholder. She was not more or less worthy of love and belonging because she was Miss USA. She was worthy because she was a human being.

This tragic loss got me thinking, again, about pageants (which, yes, I will continue to write about until I am blue in the face). It had me reflecting on how her death by suicide will forever change the way we look at women in pageantry. Not because all of us are suicidal, but because beauty, grandeur, and achievement still will never be able to mask the glaring dysfunction of the pageant world as a whole: achieve these standards or be in the never-ending rat race that is 'being the best' and the 'most beautiful.'

I never knew Cheslie. I have no clue how her time in pageantry impacted her mental health. That is a disclaimer I want to reiterate to the fullest extent. That is not what I am writing about. I only know how pageants impacted my mental health. But I did watch her win Miss USA in 2019 and have friends who knew her personally. I remember following her on Instagram and thinking how amazing she was because she was a J.D./MBA and was on television. She wore her hair naturally curly at Miss USA when she won and rocked pantsuits better than Hillary ever could have. She was the most gorgeous person I had ever seen, literally. 

It's one of those losses that leaves us with that question. You know the one. "How could this happen to someone like her?" And it will leave us reiterating that mental illness knows no gender, race, class, or Instagram filter. We will forget this notion in two days and then the next time someone objectively beautiful dies by suicide, we will do it all over again. Rinse and repeat. 

It leaves me wondering about beauty, mostly. How horrifyingly subjective it is and how being 'beautiful,' or the process by which women try to achieve it, slowly kills us all. How we have a recipe for what the beauty standard looks like. How we abuse that recipe. How we think so plainly, so black & white about it all. You must have this eye color and wear that size and have that bone structure. And how when it's all said and done, we know beautiful people have an upper hand in this world. Therefore leaving us to think that they're fine. They don't need to be checked in on. They're beautiful. What could possibly be wrong? We see beautiful people as a fact; they're always okay because they can fall back on their beauty for anything and everything. Until they can't. Until they won't.

My time in pageants was nothing short of a fuck-all journey of trying to fit in a box. I spent 85% of my days figuring out how I could contort myself (literally) into the mold that was the standard of beauty I had to achieve, and the other 15% on shit that may have actually fucking mattered. It was chaos and I loved it. I loved the chase. I loved when judges told me 'no,' because then it gave me another chance to try again. This time, prettier. This time, thinner. This time, more beautiful.

It's why my hypothetical daughter will never do pageants. It is why -- even after 12 years of doing them -- I understand all that is wrong with them and agree that we should probably just do away with them. Not because I don't find them to be a delight to watch, because who doesn't love watching beautiful people do beautiful things and speak beautifully? We all want that. And it's okay to admit that we do. But maybe the broader feeling of my disdain for pageants is actually rooted in the mental damage I think they do to women.

I'd venture to say most women who have done pageants will disagree with me on this take. They want to believe their time was well spent. I get it. I know my time was well spent. Time well spent doesn't necessarily mean I still condone it. Like, doing drugs at a frat house until 4am is super fun and all until you're looking back, realizing you probably could've died. You get my point. I understand wanting to feel justified in the work and time you put in. I also understand if you feel you were unscathed by pageants and walked away scott free. I also think you're lying to yourself.

I am still friends with a majority of the women I competed with. One thing we can all agree on is that our days in pageantry made a mess of us mentally. The pressure is insane; it's a competition built on the foundation that, theoretically, the most successful, beautiful person wins. So, let's get clear on how that's calculated. First of all, it's not. It could never be calculated in a way that makes any logical sense because success is not the same for everyone. Success for me in my pageant days was figuring out what grad school program I wanted to do, even when I didn't really want to go, but I knew it would make my resume stand out. It was yoga 6 times a week and HIIT training every day. It was meal prep and turmeric and trips to LA to find the perfect wardrobe. It was gratitude journaling and biohacking my way to a size 4. It was ass glue and bronzer on my abs and knowing every detail about the Taliban and illegal immigration. It was sharing my story of my rape probably a little too soon so that everyone could know my trauma and know I was stronger for it. A real #queen. It was deeply rewarding and fucking exhausting. I wouldn't trade that time for anything. But I also know that I'd never recommend it to others.

If we're being honest here, we'd look at how women have to do so much to just keep up anyways, let alone when doing a pageant. We have to be sure to stay fit for our spouses and be able to cook and clean and DIY ourselves to a better existence. We have to get all the Amazon gadgets on TikTok because #aesthetic and wear thongs and have perfectly manicured Instagrams but not too manicured because we're chill girls. We must be laid back but also passionate but also one of the guys. We must be moms and wives and fuckable and dateable and not "crazy." We must be funny and cool and hold our booze and show enough skin but not too much because c'mon -- we're not asking for it here. We have to have PhD's and nice cars and dinner on the table by 6:30. We have to be #girlbosses with push presents. We have to be loosey-goosey and fancy free and order Bulleit to prove we're cool but also be someone your grandma would like. And swearing? Forget about it. We have to be all things rolled into one and we decided it'd be a good idea to pin women against one another in a competition of achievements? I need a goddamn nap.

I hope I live to see the day where beauty queens aren't discredited in their mental health struggles simply because they have the luxury of being beautiful by societal standards. I hope I live to see the day where the pressures put on women are relinquished by the hands of society and we can all live in peace and say 'fuck' whenever we want without being dubbed as "trashy." I hope I live to see the day where 'beautiful' means more than the dress size a woman wears and how glowy her skin looks. I hope I live to see the day where societal expectations of women are that of our male counterparts. 

I hope.

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out. 

NATIONAL SUICIDE PREVENTION HOTLINE: 1-800-273-8255.