My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere by Susan Orlean

daughter, right? It’s fun for us, and she really enjoys it. It’s mother-daughter time, and I know someday we won’t have that as much. We’re putting all her pageant pictures and scorecards in a scrapbook so she can have it, and someday she’ll be able to see it and all her trophies and say, ‘Gee, I did that!’ It gives her something she can be proud of.”
    The pageant was about to start, and Kris stood up and attached a bow to Nina’s wisps of hair. Nina didn’t have enough hair to hold a regular barrette, so Kris had devised something clever with a piece of a zipper she’d cut from a Ziploc bag. She said she realized that some people might not like pageants, because they thought children shouldn’t be exposed to competition this early in their lives, but she and James thought it would be good for Nina—it would give her a head start, especially if Nina wanted to try for Miss America someday. Kris said, “I know it’s a lot of pressure, but, I mean, you know, you’re under some kind of pressure your whole entire life.”
     
     
     
    DARLENE LIKES HER PAGEANTS to start with the babies, because they’re at their best in the morning. “You have to do it that way,” she said. “Babies just will not put up with an all-day pageant.” The room for the competition looked festive. A blue-and-white Southern Charm banner was hanging on the back wall, and beside it was a table loaded with crowns and trophies of all different sizes. The crowns were as big as birthday cakes and were studded with rhinestones. The biggest ones cost almost two hundred dollars apiece. “When Becky was in pageants, she was always getting these so-so crowns,” Darlene had complained to me. “I don’t want that reputation, so I spend a fortune on my crowns.”
    The judges were two big-boned women with layered haircuts and soft faces. For a few minutes, they murmured to each other and then looked at Stacie with solemn expressions and nodded. The mothers brought their babies forward one by one and held them facing out toward the judges, fluffing the babies’ skirts into meringues of chiffon that billowed up and over the mothers’ arms and the babies’ dangling legs. Displayed this way, the babies looked weightless and relaxed and sublime, suspended in midair. The judges studied them and scored them in the individual categories while Stacie read introductions: “This is Cheyenne. Her hobbies are playing and cooing. . . . Her favorite food is pears. . . . Her favorite TV show is Barney. She is sponsored today by her friends and family. . . . This is Kayle. . . . Her favorite food is macaroni and cheese. . . . Her hobby is exploring newfound things. . . . This is Taylor. . . . She loves horseback riding and taking her baby cat, Patches, out for walks.” One baby picked her nose during her moment at the judging table. Another flailed her arms at the balloons floating above the judges and started to cry. Kris bounced Nina and clucked at her until she finally cracked a gummy smile, but just at that moment both judges happened to look away. Everyone in the audience was standing and waving and aiming toss-away paper cameras at the babies onstage, and every time a camera flashed, the crowns on the table flashed, too.
    The older girls were divided into age groups of twelve to twenty-three months, twenty-four to thirty-five months, three- and four-year-olds together, five- and six-year-olds, and so on. Southern Charm accepts girls up to twenty-one years old, but the oldest girl at the Prattville pageant was probably seven. These older children walked onstage by themselves, and some of them even turned the way they were supposed to when they got to the masking-tape X’s, and a few remembered to do “pretty hands” and “pretty feet” and the grimacing pageant-girl smile. The two-year-olds tended to wander. A blonde from Eclectic named Kendall stood twirling a piece of her hair around her finger and then roamed off the stage. Her mother