NIKI POLYOCAN
Last week's Burger Babe pageant; the winner!
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SHE WENT AWAY for a while, but don't worry, the Kidd Valley Burger Babe is back! And unbelievably, after a long road of high hopes, seeming disappointment, shattered nerves, desperate pharmaceutical use, and not- at-all-bitter crosstown rivalry, I am she, and this is my story.
A few months ago, I got word that Kidd Valley was looking for a new, live Burger Babe: Be over 18, send a photo and an essay, and you could be in the pageant to become the new Burger Babe! Win free burgers for life and be the 2001 Babe on a promotional poster! Oh, how I laughed.
Next thing you know, it's the evening before the entry deadline and I'm being photographed in short-shorts, sprawled on the hood of my car with an extra-large Kidd Valley cup. I pen an essay that is, if I do say so myself, a masterpiece of propaganda on one of the provided topics: "How the Kidd Valley Burger Babe can inspire future leaders."
But the week that finalists are to be notified comes and goes. I awaken Saturday an abject failure; the article I'd decided to write should I become a finalist is screwed, and moreover I am clearly an ugly old hag.
Then, in the mailbox: the letter. I rip it open. Congratulations! I have been selected as a finalist! My heart races! I cast bothersome liberated thoughts aside for the moment: I am a Babe Finalist! My image shall adorn auto repair shop walls across the region, maybe! Gloria Steinem left this triumphant moment out of "I Was a Playboy Bunny," but I'm betting she felt it: I am validated, approved, stamped Grade A, the machine wants me.
MY HEART CONTINUES TO RACE, now unpleasantly. I have horrible stage fright. I think pageants are horrible crap. What will I write? I like the Babe, I always have. I like her pin-up, Bettie Page quality; she looks sweet but smart, like she'd fuck you silly or beat the crap out of you, drink us under the table while talking circles around us. But this is just my hopeful fantasy. She's just a cartoon babe on a burger, stubbornly silent, ridiculous, madonna, whore.
So I either drop my drawers to reveal "Sexism is back" painted on my ass or just go along with the dog and pony show. But I want to be declared a Babe and then tell the judges to go to hell. I want to give her a voice.
It is at times like these that one's thoughts naturally turn to how tight one's shorts should be: pretty damn tight. For the next few weeks, I try not to fall off my bike and I conduct a pallor-reduction campaign that consists of sitting out in the late summer sun, sweating over my college texts from feminist literary criticism class. In the interest of not fainting during the pageant, I call my uncle the shrink for some prescription pills; beta blockers are a non-narcotic (damn!) medication that apparently do not make you drunken or woozy but merely omit the shaking and general terror.
Finally, the big day arrives. I take my pill 90 minutes early, as directed. I really, really don't want to do this. This is not fun.
The pageant is held on the large back deck at Ivar's (same ownership) Salmon House on Lake Union, and I am forced right into the bosom of the public in my Burger Babe attire. I smile like a madwoman. Though I entered to represent the Capitol Hill store, I've been reassigned to the University District. I'm pissed. I smile away.
Everything seems to be under a slow, hazy sea. I figure my beta blocker is blocking my betas, but I feel like I'm on LSD.
Inexorably nice, the other contestants stonewall me: no real reason they're doing this, no special feeling about it. Miss Renton is dressed incongruously in schoolgirl attire ࠬa Britney Spears. She's young, blond, and cheerful, representing everything I cannot be, will not be, have never been. "She's going down; you've got it all over her," one of my girlfriends hisses in my ear, jolting me.
We all have to pose atop an enormous plastic burger; it's mounted via a stepladder, a challenge (and possible legal liability) given the three-inch heels we're all wearing.
Next come the essays. The emcee is a pretty woman all in pink who rolls her eyes and smirks during the speeches. She makes cracks about the free burger prizes like "You also get a gift certificate to Jenny Craig." The contestants, by comparison, are paragons of innocence and light, and at least half of them address that the Burger Babe might be considered sexist, but they have co-opted her in some way. Miss Bellevue says that to her, the Babe represents someone who can eat whatever she wants and still look beautiful, "like me!" The logic is a little flawed but the sentiment is lovely. Another entrant claims the Babe as "anyone she wants to be, a mother, a business owner, a community leader—and I'm all those things."
My much-dreaded moment at the microphone seems to happen without me. People are laughing and cheering distantly, on the planet the audience is on. My remarks about Judy Nicastro and renters' rights are met with a roar.
