Back to School

A 1950 womanless beauty pageant at Cradock High School in Portsmouth, Virginia

Commenting on last week's womanless beauty pageant post, my blogging sister Meg Winters wrote, "I can't figure out why the schools sanction these events. There must be some sort of educational explanation, but I cannot for the life of me imagine what it is. Do you have any thoughts?"

I believe that schools sanction the womanless pageants because they are a good moneymakers. The schools' investment is minimal, so most of the income is profit. It is a lot easier than selling chocolate candy bars door-to-door, which is what my high school made us do.

Historically, I believe the womanless beauty pageant was a descendant of the womanless wedding, which was a popular fundraiser in the Midwest and Southern USA in the 20th Century.

Except for the flower girls, the femulating participants of womanless weddings were adults. So when it came time to find fundraising activities for a scholastic femulators, womanless beauty pageants seemed more age-appropriate. The pageants began in earnest in the late 1940s, grew in popularity in the 1960s and today, is still a popular fundraiser despite pushback by transphobia.

Anyway, I sure would have preferred donning an evening gown and sashaying on stage rather than selling candy door-to-door.

Go back to school in this preppy outfit from ModCloth (Source: ModCloth)

Miss Danny Hicks was a vision of loveliness in the 1965 boy beauty pageant at Columbia (SC) High School.

It’s that time of year

By Starla Renee Trimm

Ahhh… autumn in the Deep South.

In a few weeks, the oppressive heat and humidity will begin to wane, the mountainsides will come alive with spectacular colors, the SEC will begin to once again dominate college football and the kids will return to school. And where gays, atheists and Muslims are still soundly reviled, where they would rather let trans students pee in their pants than use the appropriate bathroom, where city council and school board meetings still begin with prayers “in Jesus’ name,” where your “right” to buy an AR-15 without the guv’mint intefering is soundly defended, where schools, streets and parks are named not after Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, but for Lee, Jackson and Davis... yes, where grits are considered a vegetable and animal flesh is thoroughly deep fried to make sure the critter’s dead before it’s eaten... in the land of hypocrisy writ large, Gun ownin’, Bible totin’ real men and genteel women will gleefully and enthusiastically put their ‘tween and teen boys in full, beautiful feminine drag and parade them down a makeshift catwalk in a gymnasium for their school’s womanless beauty pageant with nary a trace of irony, lavishing as much time, prepartion and mascara on them as they do when their sisters run for Rattlesnake Roundup Queen or vie to be crowned Miss Mule Days. (Um, no kidding, those really are things.)

Sarcasm aside, it’s that time of year and what follows are links to galleries of some of the best school womanless events currently available online. Some schools pretty reliably hold a pageant every year like clockwork; others more sporadically so and some are “one-hit wonders” that inexplicably pulled out all the stops for an elaborate pageant one year, while never doing it again.

These are full galleries (and a few videos), some posted by schools, others by parents, teachers or other sources. It is not by any means exhaustive and there are many equally good pageants to which only a single photo or two or three scattered around the Web bear witness or for which the original source galleries have vanished over the years.

Many of the photos in these galleries have been spread around and you may well have seen most of them. But this is a chance for you to see them in context as originally posted with whatever comments were appended to give you a taste of some of the “Best of the Best” school womanless pageants in Dixie.

Will the more consistent schools grace us with another excellent event this year? Will some of the “one and done” schools revive the idea? Or will some school rise out of obscurity to begin a new pageant tradition? We shall see. Meanwhile, be inspired, amused, appalled or whatever by these shining examples of the schizoid Southern culture!

Alexander City Middle School (AL)
2015 pageant (personal gallery)

Beaver Elementary Schoolgurls

Beaver Elementary School (Wildersville, TN)
2014 pageant (personal gallery, manually click/swipe to scan through)

Central Elementary/Middle School (Dubberly, LA)
2016 pageant (personal video of opening number)
2016 pageant (personal video of introductions)
2016 pageant (personal gallery, largely focusing on the poster’s own son):
2017 pageant (personal video of opening number)

Kudos to this school. The womanless pageant is one of its many annual projects to benefit St. Jude and they raise more money than almost any other group in the state. The year I saw documented, they raised $31,000 which is pretty damn good for a not terribly large school in a mostly rural area! Yes, I make fun of Southerners, but give credit where credit’s due.

E.O. Coffman Middle School (Lawrenceburg, TN)
2015 pageant (school gallery)

Ernest Ward Middle School (Walnut Hill, FL)

Ernest Ward Middle Schoolgurls

2010 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2013 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2014 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2018 pageant (newspaper gallery)
2018 pageant (personal gallery)

Gordo High School (AL)
2013 pageant (personal gallery)
2015 pageant (personal gallery)
2018 pageant (personal gallery)

Haralson County Middle School (Tallapoosa, GA)
2017 pageant (personal gallery)
2018 pageant (school gallery)
2018 pageant (personal gallery)

May be an up-and-coming “sleeper” that will get better in time. Right now mostly “so-so” femulations and way too much of the huge, unrealistic balloon boobs sort of thing, but they’re getting an impressive number of boys participating, who seem enthusiastic (which can’t be said for the audience which seems bored out of its gourd at times).

Honaker Elementary/Middle Schoolgurl

Honaker Elementary/Middle School (VA)
2013 pageant (personal gallery)

Potts Camp Middle School (MS)
2018 pageant (teacher’s personal gallery)

Rehobeth Middle School (AL)
2017 and 2018 pageants (school club gallery; manually click/swipe to scan through)
2018 pageant (personal gallery; manually click/swipe to scan through)

Thomasville Middle School (AL)
2013 pageant (winners only)
2014 pageant (school gallery)
2015 pageant (school gallery)
2015 pageant (personal gallery)
2016 pageant (school gallery)

Wilson Hall Middle Schoolgurl

Wilson Hall Middle School (AL)
2015 pageant (professional photographer gallery, 400+ photos!)

Not many schools can afford to engage a professional photographer to document their womanless pageants, however, in this case, the photographer is also the mother of one of the contestants – the gurl in the red dress and headband – so I assume they got these for cost or maybe even for nothin’!

Finally, not a beauty pageant and not in the Deep South by any means, but I have to mention the YouTube videos from the annual talent shows held at Rachel Carson Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Maryland. For several years running, it seemed to be a tradition that some of the graduating 5th grade boys would put on a dance number dressed as girls. However, I can’t document any such act in the last 5 or 6 years, nor prior to 2009. My guess is that it was a specific group of parents that spearheaded and organized these things and when their kids aged out and moved on, the annual drag numbers ceased. But you never know – one of these years, someone associated with the school may see these videos and think, “Hey, what a fun idea!” and revive the tradition. In any case, here are three of the annual events.

Rachel Carson Elementary School (Gaithersburg, Maryland)
2009 (“All the Single Ladies," includes some fun “behind the scenes” footage)
2010 (“Life’s About to Get Good”)
2011 (“Pretty Girls Rock”)

Wearing Jovani

Bill Kaulitz