As I watched this movie again, I noticed a great consistency with the plot line from another one of my all time favorite talkies - National Lampoon's vacation. The Griswald family, against all odds, wends their way across country to California to visit the Nirvana like destination of Wally World. Watch and see if I'm not the only one who sees the similarities.
Anyway, one line in the film really struck me as poignant. Dwayne, a young man whose dreams of becoming an Air Force pilot are shattered, is talking to his uncle outside of the pageant. Dwayne says, (and I'll paraphrase here because I'm not sure profanity would be a good thing for this blog) "All of life is a beauty pageant: Jr. high, highschool, college - job, home life. It's all one big beauty pageant, trying to outshine everyone else for some inane trophy or title that says, 'I'm number one!'" I agree with Dwayne on many points - Life, in its very essence, in its very fundamental core, is a survival of the fittest. It is incredibly easy to be sucked in to the inflow over us that tells all of us to strive to be at the top of the heap. Our very human nature screams, "Everyone - look at me! Remember me! I want the world to remember my deeds because if they don't, what was the point?"
I have seen beauty pageants before. Usually the television coverage shows only a few brief segments - the interview and the swimsuit competition. Listen to that: the swimsuit competition. Is it actually possible to compete while wearing high heels and a one piece swimsuit that looks like everyone else's? How are they judged? Are they critiqued on their ability to smile while being uncomfortable that everyone is viewing them as a sexual object? Why not have the television show the talent competition - I'd love to hear some great singers, actresses or see some incredible dancing. To me, Miss Wonderful would be a talented representative of the United States of America at the Miss Universe pageant (Don't get me started on what I think of a pageant called 'Miss Universe.') We compete to be beautiful. We compete to be beautiful by the standards of a sex starved society. Society says if you are thin, have straight teeth, nice hair and a taut body, you are one up on the rest of us slouches.
So, I have tried, at times to be anti-beautiful (it's not such a hard thing in my case.) I will let my hair grow to long. One such instance in high school, I had a Mul-hawk. For those of you who don't know what that is, a mul-hawk is half mullet and half mohawk. I know that you are all jealous and I will try and find a picture for my facebook page. When my brother first gave me my mul-hawk, I was an organist at a tiny country church in rural Iowa. One cold fall morning, I put my stocking cap on and drove the ten miles to church. The older ladies of the church greeted me warmly; they loved to have a young organist. "Good morning, Reid," they twittled as they reached out to shake my hand or touch my arm. I stood quite a bit taller than most of them and as I took off my cap, the reception was almost as if I had pulled a snake out from under my hat. Gasping, the ladies took a step back - I knew the reaction would be strange. They gathered in a corner while I took my coat off and placed it on a hook. Then, there was a tug at my sleeve, and Mary pulled me around to face her. She could not even look in my eyes; they were glued to the top of my head. "Reid, we have decided that you must wear your hat during the service." So, I wore my hat during the service even though I was in a room all by myself where no one could see me. I used to take naps during the sermon - fortunately I was a light sleeper and could hear the 'amen' at the end of the oration.
I have grown my beard long enough to braid it. My visage was so different when I returned from Europe 12 years ago, that my sisters and parents didn't recognize me when I stepped off the plane. Danielle later said, "I was sitting next to Vikki (my other sister) and I pointed to you and said, 'there he is, I think.'"
My other anti-beautiful that I shared at a service the other night was my first vehicle I owned by myself. My brother's first car was a 1980 white Camaro with T-tops - it looked like it was straight out of a Whitesnake video with scantily clad lady writhing on the hood. Maybe that's why he bought it. My sister Vikki's first car, I think, was a Honda - nice white one also. My little sister's first car, if memory serves me correct, was my parent's white Ford(?) maybe. Nice white cars. When I finished the tour with Youth Encounter, I had $800 to my name. It seemed like an exorbitant amount of money after earning $50/month as a volunteer for a year and a half. Of course there is no such thing as an $800 car at a used car lot, so I went into the megatropolis of Rake, Iowa and sought out a friend of the family who liked to fix cars up and sell them off.
He had two cars and they were nothing like the cars that my siblings bought. They were both Mary Kaymobiles - pink exterior (I like to think of it as a salmon color - much more masculine), maroon interior and manual windows. 1988 Buicks. He had two of them; one was non-dented, no rust that he was selling for $1000. Too rich for my blood. The other was well used; it looked as if someone had decided that a Mary Kaymobile was a good hunting vehicle and had driven it through the fields. Imagine your surprise, if you were a hunter, out in the bush waiting for game when a 1988 pink Buick comes ripping through the field on the trail of a deer. Anyway, Mr. Woodwick was selling her with an $800 price tag. Excellent. I was so proud to pay cash.
I packed up Pinky, as I named her - later we would trade her in for a 1983 F-100 brown pickup named 'The Brain.' So, I packed up Pinky pulling a 6 foot u-haul trailer that held all my belongings and headed for the Grand Canyon State (Arizona) where I would be holding a job as a youth director.
Funny thing - as a youth director driving a Mary Kaymobile, all the kids always new where I was. And, in fact, the cool thing for kids to do was to ride with me in the Pinkymobile on our way to youth events. The Anti-beautiful thing began to catch on. Soon, kids were asking me if, when they bought their first car, they should get a Gremlin or an Omni.
In some ways, there is something completely beautiful about not worrying about the exterior. Like Pinky, our exterior's all fade a bit after a while. The polish wears off, the rust begins to show. Perhaps the body become a little outdated, doesn't start as well in the mornings or cold - but cars are, at their core, simply just a mode of transportation. Our bodies, in some respects, are that also. What is important is not that they always remain shiny and nice-smelling (although I would think that would be imperative for upkeep), but that they bring our souls to people and places so that we can experience all that God has for us. So I say, enjoy the ride and stop worrying about the mode.
Well, I guess I mixed enough metaphors for the day. And perhaps I've delved a bit too far into an idealistic world. But, seriously, enjoy the ride today. Take a few minutes to not look in the mirror and take heart in the beauty of what God is doing in the world.
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