A couple months ago I was approached on Facebook by an event organizer for an upcoming fundraising event called Hunks in Heels, a woman-less beauty pageant hosted by a local women’s group comprised of realtors for the benefit of homeless female veterans in the area. It would be their first annual event with the hope that the event will grow bigger and better year after year. She said that someone suggested me as a potential contestant.
I was intrigued.
(And I still don’t know who it was that suggested me….some mysteries will never be solved I suppose…)
I asked for some more information and while waiting did some searches online. I must have been short on time because the only pictures I remember seeing were those of “manly” men in firemen/policeman/military uniforms or other “manly”-type uniforms, with the lone exception of their feet – they were in women’s heels. My first gut was that this was one of those fundraisers where you symbolically wear some sort of token to raise awareness, bring in money, and in general have fun with it. I figured – what the heck? I’m in.
Then I received the information packet.
One document was a sponsorship solicitation page – no big deal there. The next document I opened was some sort of contestant questionnaire. I glossed over the first page, which asked for name, occupation, etc. I ignored that for the time being and opened up the last document in the packet, introduction letter.
Here we go – let’s see what this is about.
My first clue that things may be a little more…involved…than I thought was the mention somewhere in the middle of the page about contestants competing in casual wear…[okay, I guess it’ll be ‘casual’]…talent…[ooh – I’ll have fun with that one]…onstage question…[no big deal]…and let’s see…
…formal wear.
Huh? Formal wear?!? As in like a dress?!? What about the fireman uniform?
Well so much for an imitation of Fire Marshall Bill in heels. (which would have been HILARIOUS by the way…)
I went back and re-read the section to make sure I didn’t miss something. Now the ‘casual wear’ part jumped out more than it did before. Hang on – this sounded like a real beauty pageant! My daughter had just been in a couple earlier this year, and the format was eerily similar. I hadn’t misread. I went back to the questionnaire, looking more closely. Right after all the basic information it read, “answer the following questions as your character.” I thought, “Character…now what could that mean? Let’s see…your name, your talent, interests and hobbies, and then a bunch of questions whose answers would be read while you were on stage–“
WAITAMINIT – THIS IS A REAL BEAUTY PAGEANT!
I still wasn’t fully ready to accept the likelihood that I was reading it correctly, and wrote the organizer to verify my thoughts. She replied almost immediately with an emphatic confirmation. It was true – I had just agreed to be a woman. Full drag. Character background and everything. What had I gotten myself into?
You may be surprised to discover that my wife’s reaction to this ‘news’ was one of pure joy and elation. The jokes ensued over the next couple days between her and the rest of my family (thanks, bro). It was okay – I took it like a man.
Well, you know what I mean…
As the news settled into my brain over the coming days and weeks, I finally got to work deciding on my character. I knew right away she would have some sort of accent (I love accents), and settled in on three choices. Choice #1 was an upper-crust (posh) British woman who was very regal. Snooty. Superior. Except she was actually inferior in every way. I ultimately decided against her because I didn’t want to come off as too rude or condescending. I mean, that could be funny in the right circumstances, but probably not here. Choice #2 was a Latina woman. I loved how the accent was playing and how I could take the character in various directions, but ultimately because of my talent choice I decided to go with…..Choice #3 – a trailer-trash strung out redneck woman. And not just any redneck woman, but one that embodied every stereotype I could cram into this tiny character, no matter how ridiculous. After deciding on her, I came up with her name pretty quickly: Samantha Lane Underwood-Thomas, which came with a couple jokes. The running one throughout the pageant was that “I had that dash between them last two cause it made it look fancy.” (There was also a more subtle joke in her name that…well…let’s just say she couldn’t get her initials monogrammed on anything.)
Once I had the character, I set about answering the questionnaire. I’m including the questions below. These ultimately were read while I did my ‘walks’ in various attire, though they were written as if I were answering them.
- List your interests/hobbies. Watchin’ stories, listenin’ to the police scanner, muddin’, bein’ a mostly devoted mama to my 3 kids.
- List 3 words that best describe you: Worn out, sometimes hangry, beautiful on the inside…wait, does that count as 3?
- List your 3 favorite foods: Chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, and fried chicken. Oh, and pickles.
- What is your ambition? One day I hope to be free of these dang kids so I can get my youthful figure back. I also hope to finally win the lottery after all these years. Oh, and I want to get on Family Feud, but I’ll probably gonna wait until the kids are gone because they will NOT look good on the TV, plus they are DUMB (but they get it honest from their daddies).
- What do you consider your greatest personal accomplishment? My greatest accomplishment was winning the Little Miss Peanut Pageant when I was 3 years old. There were only two of us in the competition and I managed to win after the other little girl fell on stage, started crying, and ran to her mama. Yep, it’s been pretty much downhill from there.
- Who is the person you admire most and why? The person I admire the most is actually the PEOPLE I admire the most, and that is the group of female veterans we’re all here tonight to benefit!! (pause) No wait, can I change it? I meant Jesus.
As you can see, she was ready to go. The final thing to take care of was the talent. That’s a story in and of itself that I’ll put in another post.
The pageant began with an opening number, which was every bit the disaster I predicted it would be. I’m speaking of myself of course; there were some guys that actually remembered the moves. We all just didn’t seem to get them in sync with each other. It was funny for the audience though, which was more important than getting it right!
The order of the pageant was the casual wear, talent portion, formal wear, and then the on-stage question. I was surprised to discover that actually walking in the heels wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. And they weren’t short either – they were 3-4″! However, by the end of the evening, my feet hurt from wearing them because they were too big for my feet (I over-estimated the size variance) and I had this extra padding shoved in the toes to help them fit tighter. The end result was that the already-tiny-space for my toes was made even smaller. In the end, though, it was all worth it because…
I WON!
That’s right, ol’ Dad here is the 2019 Hunks in Heels Pageant winner! In fact, the actual ‘crowning’ moment turned out to be one of the most hilarious of the night because my crown didn’t actually want to stay on top of my head. A half dozen people on stage must have tried at some point to get it to stay in place, and in the end I gave up and strolled the stage with my head held sideways and the crown hanging from my wig on the side of my head. Ah well; Samantha Lane could never be guilty of being graceful, so if the crown fits…
(or in this case doesn’t fit…)
The pageant was able to raise some money for a great cause and in the end a great time was had by all. The audience seemed to enjoy themselves, and i know we had a hilarious time laughing at each other backstage. I can’t wait to be a part of it next year! In fact, I’m currently working on getting my brother to participate…
Hint, hint, bro…
Here are some pictures from the event. I’ll post links to the videos as soon as I can!
