September 16th

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is about a plane full of beauty pageant contestants who crash land on a deserted island and need to learn how to survive. This is a comedy that is a satire of women in today's society. The way that we keep trying to say that women are equal and that we accept everyone that is really just a lie. There is so much in there about racism and stereotypes and how in America's culture today there are so many double standards and false meanings. When the girls first crash, many of them die, as well as all the adults. But they make jokes, like when one girl starts to pray "dear lord Jesus, thank you for getting us all here safely" when another girl shrieks that one of the others just died, and the first girl says "well, most of us here safely." The thing is, a lot of people would react like that. There wasn't that much mourning or anything, they just sort of went from being in shock to moving on. We treat our opponents (the pageant contestants) almost as harshly as we do our worst enemies. There is also "commercial breaks" throughout the book, and while they are obviously there for comedic relief it also does poke fun and seriously does turn over the leaf that we've been using to try and cover up the way America feels about women. One commercial is about Lady 'stache off, and the daughter says "will it hurt?" and the mother says "of course it will, pain is beauty". Women pluck, wax, cut, trim, paint, polish, buff, grind, file, and inject ourselves to appear beautiful, so it's no wonder that this is a common saying. A lot of the story is sex focused, especially on the double standards between men and women. It's incredibly sexist and awful that a man who sleeps with a lot of women is a stud, while a woman who sleeps with a lot of men is a slut. Women lack the sexual empowerment that society bestows upon men. We also lack the freedom to speak out with anger without being accused of being hormonal. So much of this book speaks in humorous words but with a serious undertone. This is an excellent coming of age story that every young woman should read.