I watched the Miss America Pageant on television the other weekend, and the only reason why I did was to see Miss Montana, also known as Alexis Wineman, an 18 year old who has a form of autism, specifically PDD-NOS. Some people speculated she has a form of Asperger Syndrome, but AS is technically not part of the autism spectrum disorder as of this writing. Alexis has mentioned publicly that she suffers with social issues, and has constant meltdowns.
She did pretty well regardless, and of course what you see on camera, can be totally different off camera. That applies for everyone, not for someone whose autistic.
I have to say she’s a beautiful young lady given her autism and her struggles in her early life. There aren’t that many girls with autism and ones that look beautiful.
I digress.
While I am on the subject of beauty queens, I have a personal story about beauty girls, pageants and the aftereffects.
I will not specify any details, due to privacy reasons, because if I get too specific, then you would know where I used to live (possibly ruin my anonymity) and not only that, I would divulge the real girl that’s part of my story.
I went to school with this undisclosed ex-beauty queen and she was in one of my home classes in elementary school. That’s how I knew her. It was only in one grade. I came across some of the letters she wrote to me during that year. (I’m planning on purging them if I come across it again.) The reason why I got letters from her was that the school had a mail service, where we could mail letters within the school with each classroom having its own address, not that she was obsessed with me you see. I only knew her personally for nearly a year as a child.
I can go on about the humble and innocent years, as I keep digressing.
I was placed out of district when I was going into 6th grade and I basically disappeared and lost contact with everyone until the innovation of Facebook.
When I started to actively use my Facebook account a handful of years ago; I started to befriend my former classmates, I befriended this ex-pageant member on Facebook, after the window of her serving her title in my state. Her Facebook was locked down and very minimal during the time window serving Miss NH, which in basic logic would make sense, don’t want any scandals you know especially in a electronic age that we are in now. In the early 00s, you didn’t have to worry about social media, just the plain ol slow days of the Web.
Right after I friended her, her friend count was hitting 1,000 “friends” already! I wrote on her wall of a “hey! how’s it going?” with no reply.
Red Flag #1: she was using people. Never replied to people she forgot. A thearpist I was talking to thought well maybe she had a poor “social memory” and forgetting honestly who I was. You talk to others and I allegedly leave an impression. Again, I believe I (and others) were used. Regardless, I saw through that pretty quickly.
Red Flag #2: She posted modeling photos as her default, looking very perfect and showing off her body. And over time she posted even more dare I say hot photos of her in skimpy outfits and becoming more and more narcissistic. She naturally had an athletic build, and I think she was in dancing years back, I’ll say she’s a hottie.
Another Red Flag worth noting: I started to see the ins and outs of general social networking with the power of Facebook and Wall conversations. Ever wonder how the football teams recruit cheerleaders? On her Facebook wall, her friends and her statuses would mention about tryouts for becoming a Patriots cheerleader. To be fair, the girls tried to audition for the Celtics, but never looked at being a Bruins Ice Girl. Regardless, It just made me sick. It’s all about networking, ones “social capital” and dare I say even “erotic capital”? And this girl came from a middle class family, I looked up where she used to live on the tax deeds, and it wasn’t the ritzy area of town. Don’t know much about her family, notably her father, I’d assume he was an engineer. I met him once during like an open house at school. I don’t think she was privileged per se, other than being in the local beauty pageant. I can’t confirm any additional information, its just speculation.
After experiencing how the social networking world through my window called the web browser, I just saw things differently.
I don’t like beauty pageants.
Its features nearly 50 (mostly) privileged girls
They all have a same type of look
They have a narcissistic type personality (in most cases)
They must’ve been the popular “clique” in high school
They love drama.
I can’t confirm independently if this young woman meets any if not all of my criteria; I do know having that Facebook experience with “her” closed another door of my innocence of how the world works. It opened another door confirming the fact that there are jerks in the world, and sadly, these jerks don’t get treated as such until much later in their life as karma will be their bitch. Sadly females never get this kind of treatment as males do.
I know that at times beauty can be painful.