Book Review: Beauty Queens by Libba Bray

Release Date: May 24, 2011

Publisher: Scholastic Press

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 400

Source: My local library.

Summary:
From bestselling, Print Award-winning author Libba Bray comes the story of a plane of beauty pageant contestants that crashes on a desert island.

Teen beauty queens. A "Lost"-like island. Mysteries and dangers. No access to email. 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 libbabray.com)
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Reading Beauty Queens is like watching a classic screwball comedy such as Bringing Up Baby*, but smarter: author Libba Bray keeps the satiric laughs and plot twists coming so quickly that reading this novel is almost exhausting.**

After the contestants for the Miss Teen Dream pageant crash on an island en route to the pageant venue, the survivors form two teams--the Sparkle Ponies and the Lost Girls--to salvage materials from the wreckage of the plane, and search for more survivors in the jungle. Unfortunately, the list of survivors is few, and food and water are in dangerously short supply. One beauty queen reflects on the girls' predicament:

 "Ohmigosh. No food at all . . . . I am going to be so superskinny by pageant time!"

The beauty queens soon have more to worry about than food. In the universe of Bray's novel, a giant company called The Corporation seems to hold a monopoly on TV shows and all sorts of products. The Corporation also has political ambition and takes part in shady deals with leaders from other countries, like the one that's scheduled to take place between The Corporation and MoMo B. ChaCha, the dictator of the Republic of ChaCha (whose most trusted advisor is a stuffed lemur named General Good Times), on the same island as the one the beauty queens crashed on.

The resulting hijinks, violence, and explosions are wacky fun. Also, there are sequins.

Bray executes her outlandish plot with plenty of satire and wit, and the laughs don't stop when the Deep Thoughts begin. In Beauty Queens, Bray goes after materialism, gender roles, racism, society's attitude toward the handicapped, environmentalism, the fashion and beauty industries, and more. Bray invites readers to question the world around them: just because certain social ideas exist doesn't mean they're right.

Bray's main aim, however, seems to be to subvert the social expectations placed on girls and women. Bray clearly states within the novel that Beauty Queens is a sort-of retelling of Lord of the Flies, but with girls and a more positive view of humanity. While thinking about life on the island, Miss Nebraska muses:

"Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's watching them so they can be who they really are."***

Much of the novel focuses on identity. Each beauty queen has a specific struggle, although some characters bleed into the background while others are forceful and memorable.

I had mixed feelings about Beauty Queens until I finished it. The serious and funny parts don't always mesh very well, and much of the novel feels all-over-the-place. But now that I'm done reading it, I'm still thinking about it. And laughing. (General Good Times, anyone?) Beauty Queens is an enjoyable, intellectual novel, and I highly recommend it.

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*Bringing Up Baby trailer

**I'm not sure how Bray lives in her own head without laughing 24/7. Or maybe it's more of a cackle.

***This quote instantly reminded me of Barbara Kruger's 1981 work Untitled (Your Gaze Hits the Side of My Face), which uses the format of a magazine cover to suggest how aggressive the way society scrutinizes women can be.

Image from SGA Art History