Book Review: Beauty Queens

From bestselling, Printz Award-winning author Libba Bray, the hilarious (and sometimes twisted) story of a plane crash, beauty contestants, and desert island survival.

The Premise: Teen beauty queens. A desert island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to e-mail. And the spirit of fierce, feral competition that lives underground in girls, a savage brutality that can only be revealed by a journey into the heart of non-exfoliated darkness. Oh, the horror, the horror! Only funnier. With evening gowns. And a body count. (From Amazon).

Ages: Teen

Rated: PG-13 for violence, sexuality, and other lovely vices we are told not to enjoy but actually really do. 

Beauty Queens is a hysterical laugh so hard that you are crying romp of a tale that is simultaneously an examination of femininity and feminism, sex and sexuality, and the cult of consumerism. 

Beauty Queens begins with a word from the Miss Teen Dream pageant, The Corporation, warning that some of the content of this book is subversive and must not be taken seriously. No really, they are just looking out for us and would prefer really if we just put the book down and continue on our quests to be beautiful and vapid. I mean pretty.

In this Lord of the Flies meets Miss Congeniality-esque masterpiece, an airplane carrying 50 contestants in the Miss Teen Dream pageant crashes on a deserted island killing the camera crew, the chaperons, and a good chunk of the contestants themselves. The survivors are left to survive as only beauty queens can, with grace and poise. Alright, it is hard to survive with grace and poise when your hormones are running rampant, there are sexy pirates in the vicinity, and you've run out of Lady Stache' Off that rids you of your unwanted facial hair, or any body hair, as well as conveniently cleaning up your skin. Handily, it can also be turned into a bomb. 

The layout of the book is structured to resemble a reality TV special, complete with commercial breaks, words from our sponsor, and product placement footnotes. There are info fact sheets about each girl that provides them a chance to tell the audience who they are, which provides constant humor as well as insight into the crumbling pageant facade each girl wears like armor. The evil villains are always portrayed in the classic villain sense complete with location and 0100 hour time references.

I love this book. I love love love this freaking book. Can you tell? I said love three times. It was a clue.

But seriously, this book is fabulous, subversive, and makes you think about social mores, political happenings, and why on Earth you watch Jersey Shore. Example? The crew of Captains Bodacious IV discuss the perils of being reality telly stars, and what follows is... well the truth of marketing, fame, and longevity of reality stars.

“Marketing says pirates are over — it’s all about hot trolls now. They’ve got a hot troll show lined up and ready to go in our time slot: Trollin’ on Delaware Beach. Ridiculous! Like, who is going to watch a bunch of trolls getting drunk at clubs and trying to entice college girls to their place under the bridge? I heard goats mentioned, too, and that’s just wrong” (Excerpt).

Oh wait, did I say challenges social mores? I am such a total bore, going on and on and on and on about how our culture needs to treat its girls better, have less qualifications and restrictions on what it takes to be happy, be reasonable. Look. I understand I have a problem, but I like my problem. So! This book challenges social mores while using pre-packaged stereotypes that unravel faster than my shoddy knitting. We've got Alpha girl Miss Texas, Taylor Krystal Rene Hawkins who is the ultimate contestant, Petra with a deep dark secret, Adina the journalist working on her expose of pageants, to Jennifer who loves comics and super heroes. The girls have secrets, are diverse in ethnicity and sexual orientation, and are not just some pretty face to be fobbed off the moment a hot boy shows up. As I said, sexy pirates. Hard to resist.

Beauty Queen delves in issues of race, class and sexism, and it hold back no punches. For example, the oft used tool of relegating women of color to sassy sidekick roles on tv is called out, the book continually reminds readers of how much time, effort, product and money girls have to put into their appearances while boys just have to put on clean clothes and they are good to go (For a couple of interesting articles on this, check out Jezebels 'The College Fashion Gender Gap' and 'Women Judged For Looking Older, Judged For Using Botox'.)

Of course, no story is complete without a shadowy and malignant presence. The sponsor, known only as The Corporation fills that niche perfectly. The Corporation owns not only the Teen Dream pageant, but also a number of beauty products and fashion lines, they produce movies and TV shows aimed at the young, the beautiful, and the mindless masses. I love The Corporation. It is my new favorite comedic bad guy. Throughout Beauty Queens, The Corporation is continually written into novel with footnotes, advertising, ™ and © references which gives some idea of the real-world pressures these teen dreamers cope with, while also perpetuating the mock media machine. It is a continually hilarious satire about our fascination with being beautiful, having the latest and looking the coolest. 

This is Libba Bray flaying consumerism with witty subterfuge – she makes a mockery of teen sensations and latest crazes, by holding up a fun-house mirror of truth for readers to stare into, horrified and cackling (ALPHA Reader).

I just, I love this book guys. It is smart, sassy, and redefines and recreates what it is to be a girl in this day and age. Girls kick ass. Watch yourselves guys, we are much more dangerous than you would ever imagine.

Grade: A+++++++++++++"

"This is Libba Bray, a writer much more interested in subverting that paradigm—girl-on-girl psychological violence as spectator sport—than playing into it…Beauty Queens is a madcap surrealist satire of the world in which her readers have come of age—reality TV, corporate sponsorship, product placement, beauty obsession—but ultimately, it's a story of empowering self-discovery."  –New York Times Book Review