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

was standing next to me, and she said that this would probably be Kendall’s last pageant because she hated wearing dresses and was much happier barrel-racing her pony at home.
    The Southern Charm rules say, “Remember, if you coach from the audience, the child will not have eye contact with the judges and they will deduct points for not having eye contact.” In spite of that, nearly all the parents were on their feet during the rest of the pageant, making wild hand signals to their daughters that meant “Smile” and “Blow a kiss at the judge” and “Smile much bigger.” They pushed to the front of the room, nearly leaning over the judges’ shoulders. It was as if someone had set them on a table and then tipped it forward. Just a few minutes after the pageant started, hardly anyone was left sitting in the back of the room.
    Darlene has forty thousand people on her mailing list, and they are spread out all over the nation. JonBenet Ramsey was one of those names, although she never particularly stood out. Darlene says that in spite of what the papers have said, not that many people in the pageant world had heard of JonBenet until she got killed. Right after the murder, Darlene looked up JonBenet’s name on her computer and deleted it, so that the Ramseys wouldn’t get any upsetting Southern Charm mail.
    Darlene and Jerry Burgess live about ten miles from downtown Jackson, in an old farmhouse that has been renovated since the days when their daughter, Becky, was at home. (Becky is married and lives in Nashville, where she is studying to go to medical school, and she has a two-year-old daughter, who is just starting on the pageant circuit.) Now the Burgess house is pure pageant. In the outbuildings is a trophy shop and a silk-screening shop where the banners are made and a photography studio where Jerry shoots portfolios of contestants. In the basement is Glitz & Glamour, Darlene’s mail-order pageant dress business, and in the front room are four computers containing all the mailing lists, and eight video machines for copying Jerry’s official tapes of the pageants, and Federal Express labels and boxes for the dozen or so Glitz & Glamour dresses and Southern Charm videos they ship out every day.
    The phone rings all day without stopping, so it is nearly impossible to have an uninterrupted conversation with Darlene. One of the days I was in Jackson, I asked her why she thought people outside the pageant world objected to it so adamantly. “I don’t know why they even have an opinion about it at all,” she said. “I look at pageants like I look at any other hobby, like golf. I sure wouldn’t hit a little white ball around on a lawn, and I don’t know why anyone else would want to, but that’s their business and not mine. Hold on a minute.
    “Hello, Glitz. . . . Yes, this is Darlene Burgess. . . . Okay, I can send you an entry form. How’d you find out about us? . . . Well, if you want to go to New York, that’s a mininational. Who’s crowning in New York? . . . Let me think. . . . Oh, fiddle! Jerry, who’s crowning in New York? Well, I can’t remember. . . . So now give me your name and address.”
    Vicki Whitehead, who works at Glitz & Glamour part-time, came upstairs. “Darlene, I have a lady on the phone who has an eight-month-old she says is really tiny and she needs something very dainty for her to wear. And do we have any Ultrasuede in an animal print in pink and black? Because I have a lady who’s dying for some.”
    Another call for Darlene: “I see. . . . Do you have videos of her in pageants? . . . Okay, send it and I’d be glad to critique it for you.” Darlene covered the mouthpiece and said to me, “I’m offering to do it because this lady’s up in Illinois and really needs help. They’re not too pageant wise up in places like Illinois. I really think the kids up north are afraid to compete with the kids down south. I remember once Becky said to me, ‘Mom, the New York kids are