Miss world

Cristine Brach, Almost Blue, 2024

One of my favourite images from before I existed - I mean before I was even possible, let alone probable - is a photograph of my mother. She’s standing in a line-up for a pageant, which is to say: a set of preconfigured ideas about femininity, lit for a now dated style of television. Though, even that description of a pageant (often implied to be a beauty pageant) is somewhat of a lie, because the Americanism in this sentence does not apply.  

The pageant in question was called the Miss Telethon Quest, a name with a certain ambition baked in, like a participant might be seeking something more high concept than just a sash and a flurry of charged images which demand a smile. It was a charity thing. Telethon is renowned for it’s name than it’s explicit purpose, which I have just discovered (after googling it) that supports medical research into childhood diseases. The girls (I want to say girls, not women, given they were being trained in girlishness, not womanhood) competed not just in poise, posture, and that still-popular pageant talent of being conventionally attractive, but in the talent of fundraising. You didn’t have to be the most beautiful, though I’m sure it helped; maybe just the most useful. A visual representation of moral enlightenment for the Adelaide suburbs. The best brand ambassador for empathy - which, as we now know, is its own kind of currency. It could, if you played it right, lead to PR, or some other public facing roles, if you had the gumption for it - like, say, media work - the way girlhood so often does. Smile enough, and maybe someone will pay you to talk.