It amazes me how many pageant experts, fashion consultants, English Language instructors and media savvy individuals live in Guyana. The same who themselves have never actually competed and won a pageant, do not have the face or figure to model and certainly do not have the bravery, resolve, personality or knowledge to give a proper TV interview under the pressure of one of the world’s most critical, self-hating audiences. Comfortably they criticise those who do try though, and not constructively, but with poorly written, grammatically erred sentences (ironic?) designed only for comic relief at a young woman’s expense. To ask them to actively contribute to the process and also understand the magnitude of what these women do, especially when internationally the ball really isn’t in their court, is laughable. Thankfully, I have never had and will never have any point to prove about my own beauty and intelligence since such qualities should comfortably speak for themselves and I have been blessed with genuine, objective sources of critique and advice, even amongst the malicious. Hateful naysayers, social network wannabe comedians, distasteful actual and pretend media operatives and self-proclaimed pageant gurus can never appreciate such undertakings. Therefore, it must be a necessary evil for them to sit on the side lines and comment on a life they cannot experience or understand. Of course a brazen, defensive few will say “well I don’t want to experience it anyway!” or something like that. But regardless, one would only hope that they’d provide their commentary with a bit more tact and consideration of their fellow citizen. As small as Guyana is, I promise you that the person you are laughing at is in some way otherwise attached to your life and is likely to directly or indirectly do you a favour one day. Fooling around harmlessly and ‘kicksin out’ with friends to some extent is fine but to publicly and maliciously criticise and defame a person is a moral and human atrocity.

Nevertheless contestants and individuals with a genuine interest in the development of pageants in Guyana, it is ambitious to expect this ‘crabs in a barrel’ culture to subside anytime soon so in the meantime, develop thick skin and make sure that you are ready mentally and physically before you enter or invest in a pageant. After all, the less you give them to criticise, the better. It is also important to realise that as much as the girl has work to do in representing her country abroad, she is somewhat no more than an afterthought and icing on the cake once the powers of politics, money and images of commercial and marketable beauty have decided the year’s contenders for the crown. If she’s lucky, she’ll be a wild card, probably from a small country, added solely to keep up ethical appearances or because she simply could not be ignored – enter Guyana. As a people, let’s do what we can to choose the right girl and also equip her with enough confidence and support to feel like she can stand out as that wild card, since as it is, we are sadly inept at competing with the global pageant powerhouses otherwise, or at least for the time being. Guyanese, if you really want to help, you can do several things and here are a few suggestions:

- Miss Guyana Universe represents Guyana. That’s right, all of us, not just a small sect of people or one organisation. Internationally, Miss Guyana is not seen as a representation of the franchise holder but of our country. Take ownership of the women and of the pageant. People have the power you give them and if as a people we are displeased with something in our nation, only we can COLLECTIVELY change it. Change can occur by several different methods but first you need to get the attention of the right people and in the right way. But I digress…

- Once that initial issue is tackled, offer your support mentally, morally and especially in the financial sense. When we fuss about spending US$100 on an evening dress, Venezuela is dishing out 4 times as much to fix a toe! Regardless of what they tell you, pageants seek perfection. Perfection, glitz and glamour are not cheap. Therefore, if we are going to compete, do it well or don’t do it at all. This is where the business community comes in (once transparency can be guaranteed of course) to send our girl with all the tools she will need. Besides, if she does well the tourism push will benefit the ENTIRE country so it’s only fair that this becomes an ENTIRE national effort. If as people we think it’s not worth it and we have bigger fish to fry, fine, but don’t year after year send an unprepared contestant and then be shamed and disappointed when she is no more than 2 seconds on your TV screen.

- You say you want quality contestants – the smart, beautiful and fit kind? As a people, exactly what are we doing to make the pageant appealing enough to interest such women? And are we really making it better by becoming more and more distasteful in our commentary of the few brave souls that do compete? And finally, do we respect the pageant enough to even ask such women to compete? And when they do compete and win, what will they do for the rest of their time as Queen? If you personally don’t respect pageants, again, fine – your opinion and more power to you for standing by it. However, bashing pageants now means that you are being disrespectful of it and the two are by no means the same. For instance, as much as we each have our own religion and may not respect the others as being real or whatever the case may be, it is still frowned upon for a Hindu to openly bash the Christian faith in a derogatory manner and vice versa. Hence, not agreeing with someone’s choice does not necessarily make it appropriate for you to attack that someone. In the case of Miss Guyana, what you are doing though is keeping the type of ‘quality women’ you want away, and since many of you either do not fit the bill of this ‘quality woman’ to go compete yourselves or you personally know no such woman to convince them to compete, you are only perpetuating the cycle of mediocrity that you complain so much about. Yes, we are our biggest problem.

- To my fellow Guyanese women, decide carefully before you enter a pageant. Be honest with yourself and assess your own level of appropriateness to compete locally and internationally. Selfish reasons should not be your sole motivating factors for becoming a Miss Guyana. While we would all love a new car or some money or even to be popular, they are not good enough reasons to open yourself and your country to embarrassment. Watch a pageant, or two, and decide honestly if you can compete with what you see, bearing in mind also that a great percentage of the beauty portrayed is fake and at some point you too will have to be at least a little fake. Pageantry, as much as it’s designed to empower women too, is an industry and certainly not a sugar coated, cookies and ice-cream one so you will need to lose any idealistic and naïve thoughts you may have about the whole thing, at least until it stops being heavily about the money for the powers that be. If you have got the beauty (inside and out), body, grace, charm, culture, diplomacy, wisdom (not necessarily degrees and other academic qualifications), drive, resilience, warm personality, humility, passion for community service, relatively clean reputation (you will be a role model after all), etc, I say go for it. Otherwise, just watch it on TV.

I’ll stop here for now. I think I have spoken at length. I am by no means an expert on pageants and my sentiments are not given as such, but only as a person who has experienced what I am talking about. This is my humble 6 cents, full of typos, grammatical errors, or whatever points of criticism people will surely find: take it or leave it. And if you are interested, there is much more where that came from. I really didn’t intend to write this much here, but once I started I realised how much I’d like to humbly share. Las Vegas was truly an eye-opening and learning experience for me and I think knowledge is most powerful when shared. God bless to this year’s Miss Universe contestants and be sure to take what useful information you can from your actual well-wishers and supporters, but throw out the garbage from the idle critics. Be your beautiful selves on stage this weekend. You don’t need anyone to validate you or tell you what beauty is, take it from the reigning Miss Guyana Universe who has a ‘masculine’ job in Forensics, recently shaved her head, is getting a cute lil pot belly…. basically not your typical beauty queen but is happy and STILL could get it from most of the female critics’ boyfriends and the male critics themselves. So ladies, do you.

Have a good one guys and dolls! As always, ‘twas a pleasure!