Sophie Skips Town

I’ve been procrastinating a little bit on this blog post…mostly because I honestly don’t know where to begin. Yes, I did indeed participate in a beauty pageant. Of course, a beauty pageant has always been one of the most—

I lost my train of thought because I was rudely interrupted by a huge rain spider that decided to grace myself with its presence. I just killed it with my brand new English textbook…oops. My students are going to wonder why their book has spider guts all over it. I had to wipe it off with a towel. AAH I keep playing it over and over again in my head. I had to pick up the dead spider the size of my fist and throw it outside. Oh man. The things I do in Thailand.

Ok, back to the beauty pageant. 

So I guess I’ll have to start from the beginning: picking the outfit. Oh yes, that was quite the procedure. I had to go to a tailor to get it fitted (and of course, she ripped me off because I’m a foreigner. I paid way too much to look ridiculous). She made me two outfits. One of them made me look like a four-year-old pink Barbie doll-wannabe with some strange Asian bedazzle on the blouse. The other made me look like a 60-year-old woman who likes to wear way too much of the same color…naturally, I picked the one that makes me look older. And of course, the tailor didn’t fit it right on me, so I had to safety pin the blouse because it was too big (or maybe I just lost weight from the time I was measured to the time the dress was finished?? Let’s say that happened!).

The next day, I was absent from school to attend a mandatory 6 hour-long rehearsal for the beauty pageant. These 6 painful hours consisted of me walking across a stage at a slower than snail’s pace (or, in my mother’s words, as slow as molasses), learning how to shake my hips, smile, and somehow look sexy all at the same time. I don’t know how that’s possible. But for these Asian girls, apparently it is.

When we arrived at practice, we each had to pick a number out of a hat. This number was the order in which we had to walk for the competition. My initial thought was, “Oh dear God, please don’t let me pick number one. Not number one! Not number one!” It is sort of like the scene in Harry Potter when Harry is wearing the sorting hat and is murmuring, “NOT Slytherin! Not Slytherin!” I thought of Harry Potter when I said this in my head…because it worked for him. He ended up in Gryffindor. But I ended up in Slytherin. Yes. I picked number one, of course. Out of the twenty one numbers in the hat, I just happened to pick number one. Yay.

After the painful rehearsal that taught me that I basically don’t know how to walk (except like Mr. Bean, as the Burmese boys like to tell me time and time again) or wave properly, I was finally sent home to relax. The next day, I go to school and I find two professional makeup artists in one of the classrooms. One girl takes me, sits me down, and starts throwing (literally…I’m not even kidding) containers and containers of foundation on me while the other girl starts tugging and pulling at my incredibly tangled, almost-dreadlocks-because-I’m-a-hipster-and-think-brushing-hair-is-too-mainstream hair. It was a physically painful 3 hours. It also didn’t help when the Burmese boys walked in and screamed, “AH! Is that Sophie?!” Yeah, that’s when you know something is wrong.

Of course, since my life here has been documented by several lovely Burmese friends, Facebook began to explode with photos of me. Since they’re already going viral on Facebook (I watched as the Burmese boys shared the photo with about 50 of their friends), I figured I might as well humble myself and post a couple photos on my blog. I promise you, they will be the greatest photos you will see today. Ready?

Boom. There you go.

Ok, so then I was also told one hour before the show that I was to dance a comedy duet with one of the teachers at my school. So he taught the dance to me in less than 10 minutes and you can imagine just how hilarious I looked, dancing like a Burmese girl, not knowing what the heck was going on. Then somebody grabs my hand and shoves me into a car. Of course, my hair is so big, I hit my hair on the door of the car as I’m trying to get in. And a giant clip falls from my head. Strange. Didn’t know that was there. I quickly fixed it in the car…maybe no one would notice.

Luckily, no one noticed the crooked clip in my hair because they were too enamored by my striking Asian eyebrows. They were, quite literally, painted on. I remember looking at the mirror and saying, “No..no, no, no, NO, NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” (Kind of like how Barney Stinson says, “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” in How I Met Your Mother). It was a moment of panic for me. I have never felt so insecure with make up before. I legitimately looked hideously ugly.

What’s strange is that all the women saw me and were like, “You’re so beautiful!” while the boys would say, “Where’s Sophie? That’s not her! That’s a zombie!” (Yeah, they really said that…that really makes a girl feel good as she’s about to compete in a ‘beauty’ pageant).

I’m going to split this beauty pageant post into two separate blog posts…otherwise, this will be a painfully long blog for you to read. I’m going to stop now (because I actually have another spider to go and kill, so I have to stop anyway). I know how much anticipation this is causing my readers. I apologize 🙂

Sophie So Phine’s Adventures in Beauty Pageant Land:

TO BE CONTINUED…