From February 24 to March 7, 2020 I will represent the U.S. transgender community at the Miss International Queen pageant in Thailand as Miss USA. As the world’s most prestigious transgender pageant, now celebrating its fifteenth anniversary, the two weeks of events will build positive visibility for the global transgender community.
For me, this will be a once-in-a-lifetime experience to build connections with transgender women representing twenty-five different countries. The theme of the pageant is world equality, and each contestant will present their own vision of what equal rights means to them.
I have never competed in, or even seen, a pageant before. I have never modeled or walked a runway. I don’t know how I’m going to survive two weeks of non-stop photoshoots, interviews, public appearances, and competitions. To prepare, I’ve undergone intensive coaching, watched tons of pageant videos, walked in heels constantly (my feet ache!), practiced modeling, been fitted for gowns, and had my hair and nails done. I also have had to fundraise to afford this pageant — please consider supporting me on GoFundMe here. It’s now less than 24 hours until the pageant begins, and I have to admit, I feel I need another month to fully prepare!
So how did I get here, and what got me interested in a transgender pageant in the first place?
Pageants play an important role for transgender communities in Southeast Asia
My travels and research for this blog inspired me to enter Miss International Queen. As I befriended people in Southeast Asia and interviewed them about their transgender communities, beauty pageants kept coming up. For the local transgender women I befriended, beauty pageants played an important role in creating community and positive visibility for transgender women. Not only that, I heard from cisgender people that beauty pageants were one of the main ways they had been exposed to transgender people.
When I came out to my Thai teacher as transgender, she told me about how she learnt about transgender women from watching pageants on TV. When a close transgender friend of mine in Manila took me to a party at her nail salon and introduced me to her close friends, transgender pageants were a popular topic of conversation. When I visited Singapore, where being LGBTQ is still illegal, I learned about how they hosted a transgender pageant in order to bring positive visibility to LGBTQ rights. When I met with a transgender legal advocate in Chiang Mai, she told me that when she came out as transgender to her mom, their shared love of pageants helped her mom understand and accept her. The Thai woman I interviewed for my last blog post, Five Decades of Thai Transgender Resilience, told me that competing in Miss Tiffany’s Universe transgender pageant in 2002 was a pivotal moment in her life where for the first time she felt she could be confident and proud to be transgender.
Miss Tiffany’s Universe and Miss International Queen are both produced by Tiffany’s Show in Pattaya, Thailand, with the difference being that Miss Tiffany’s Universe is open only to Thai women. Both pageants, as well as the Tiffany’s Show cabaret (founded in 1974), are incredibly popular, and are symbols of the transgender community throughout Thailand. They are so important that I wrote about them in my first blog post for TransWorldView exploring the history of transgender identity in Thailand.
My path to Miss International Queen 2020
It was on my trip to see Tiffany’s Show cabaret in December 2019 that the opportunity to participate in Miss International Queen presented itself. When I handed over my U.S. passport to pick up my ticket, a staff member stepped away from the sales counter, pulled me aside, and asked me if I was interested in entering Miss International Queen. I was told there was a screening process, and I’d be contacted if I was selected. I sent some pictures, but otherwise didn’t think much would come of it.
Then at the beginning of February, I was notified that I was selected to represent the United States as Miss USA. If I chose to accept the offer, I would have to pay the $800 entry fee, submit more photos, answer questions about equality, and send a five-minute video. I talked to many friends for advice. I researched the competition. I knew I would have to start a fundraiser and find sponsors to help with the fee and the many expenses. Plus I’d have to learn many new skills, including walking a runway. None of those things would be easy.
But of course, I decided to do it. I’ve had the support of many donors to my GoFundMe and this blog’s Patreon, the sponsorship of several local businesses including Risgee Wedding, Miss Perfect Angel Pageant, MMC Hair, and many friends who’ve volunteered their time to help. I also hired a professional videographer and local transgender activist, Shane Bhatla, to film my video introducing myself as a candidate.
Pageants as Activism
Yet even with all the coaching and preparation, this world of modeling, walking a runway, and performances all feels so alien to me. I’ve never been someone to obsess over my appearance. When it comes to competitions, my experience has mainly been running, playing roller derby, and entering tournaments for Magic the Gathering, a strategy card game. But beyond the pomp and circumstance of this pageant, there is one common thread that ties it to my career so far: the fight for equality.
As an activist for social justice, already know what it’s like to publicly demand dignity and respect. I have delivered keynote speeches at progressive conferences, been interviewed by reporters, and even spoken at the Obama White House twice. Other times, I have done activism in hostile environments. I’ve been face to face with alt-right fascists, their smug faces shouting homophobic, transphobic jabs while they stood safely protected by police. And I’ve marched into a busy intersection to protest violence against transgender women, only to see a police officer violently assault my friend, a transgender woman, who was leading the protest.
When I am on stage at Miss International Queen, I will carry these experiences with me. As my primary mentor and coach for the pageant, Khun Mee Ochin of Miss Perfect Angel Pageant has told me many times, “apply, apply, apply.” I must apply the skills I’ve learned from competition, public speaking, writing, and surviving in a transphobic world to be confident.
I hope that my performance can help inspire others. But entering this pageant was never just about me; it was about learning from and building connections with all the other contestants. We may each come from different cultures, with varying levels of acceptance. And we may all come from different political backgrounds, with differing views on how to make change in the world. But we all know what it is like to be treated as inferior to cisgender people; what it is like to be told to feel ashamed, that who we are is not worthy of love and admiration. We are all coming to Miss International Queen to demand dignity, to demand that transgender people deserve love and respect.
Building Global Transgender Community at Miss International Queen
I will be proud to share a stage with other transgender people each fighting for equality in their own way. Maybe some of them would never consider themselves an activist. Maybe some wouldn’t show up at a political rally in their home country. And maybe that’s because for many of the contestants, protesting or simply being out and proud as transgender in public could lead to them being assaulted, arrested, or even killed.
Regardless of the political situation each contestant is coming from, each contestant has her own skills, her own unique talents that she brings to the fight for equality. Social justice tactics are not one-size-fits-all. Beauty pageants can reach audiences that protests and political rallies never could. Pageants can build stronger communities, uniting transgender people from different backgrounds through a shared aspiration – the desire to be seen as worthy of admiration by a society that otherwise shuns us.
Participatory Journalism at Miss International Queen
Originally, I thought I would learn about beauty pageants as a spectator and a researcher. I thought I would just conduct interviews with participants, and then, as objectively as possible, craft a narrative about their motivations for participating. Now, I will be part of the narrative. I will know what it is like to have to be on camera constantly, answering questions and performing on stage. I will experience the 2:00AM wakeup calls, the hours of painstaking preparation to look beautiful on camera, the pain of walking in extra-high heels all day, and the difficulty of remaining poised, smiling, and positive at all times; is it really a “lunch break” if you have to sit through it in a tightly-laced formal dress and answer questions on cue?
The psychological and physical stress will no doubt be overwhelming at times. I certainly feel I’m in over my head. But if I make it through, and I hope I do, I’ll know far more about transgender pageants than I ever would from a few hours of interviews conducted on my own time.
All my travels and conversations I’ve had with transgender people for TransWorldView have helped prepare me for this moment. I’m so grateful to the LGBTQ friends I’ve made in Thailand, the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Singapore, and back home in the United States, who have all given me their love, advice, and encouragement. I’m proud to follow in the footsteps of last year’s Miss USA, Jazell Barbie Royale, who was crowned Miss International Queen 2019. I’m eager to chat with contestants from the countries I’ve visited, and to plan future travel around visiting the home countries of contestants I get to know during the pageant.
I’m excited, and scared to death, about what’s ahead. But if I’m in over my head, I’m head-over-heels in love with the idea of being on that stage. Now let’s just hope I don’t actually trip and literally end up head-over-heels on stage.
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