raefinlay

This post begins with a true confession: Many years (and even more pounds) ago, I competed in pageants. Yes, I'll pause right here while you laugh your freaking head off. ..... Feel better?

Anyway, I stayed involved with the Miss America program long after I retired from competition, training girls to walk in heels and to form opinions about what they read in the newspaper, producing, directing, fund-raising, etc. We perpetually struggled to generate interest. Through the mid-80's, pageants were all the rage, but they've been in steady decline for some time. (I don't even know if Miss America will remain a televised event.) Theories abound as to why this is so. They say the pageant is no longer relevant (nah, young women still want to be articulate and talented and beautiful), "talent" turns people off (whatever! American Idol is purely a talent show), or the pageant no longer reflects the best and brightest that the U.S. has to offer (have to concur with this one.)

I think the biggest reason that pageants are has-beens is this: They are a tiny, insulated industry. The pageant culture feeds itself with little to no outside support. And anything that feeds solely on itself eventually dies. Specifically, the only people who buy pageant tickets (a major source of funds) are pageant personnel and families of the contestants. Back in the day, heading out to Atlantic City for the national event was a dream vacation, but no none not entrenched in the culture would consider such a thing today. Likewise, fund raisers, training events, competitions are all attended by "pageant people" and no one else. Think about it: would you go to a Little League game if you didn't know anyone who was on the team? Pageantry is a hobby, a minor social club, that thinks it has national importance when it really doesn't.

And this results in a tremendous misfire when it presents itself on a nationally public level. Pageantry has developed a bland-looking, mildly charming ideal that is popular in the industry, but corporate suicide. Pageant winners are women who garnered moderate scores from all the judges, for they had no individual spark or rare beauty with which to offend, so they walk away with crown and scepter as the non-pageant audience cries dull, dull, dull! And ratings continue to slide.

I have a point to all this, I promise.

The analogy is nowhere near perfect, but I'm often reminded of my sordid pageant past as I continue to embrace the speculative fiction writing culture. It's a wonderful place to be. A serious hobby, a social club of the neatest, brightest people I know. But folks, is it possible that we are feeding on ourselves?

Circulation numbers for the literary spec fic mags are in frightening decline. I wonder if the only people who read Fantasy & Science Fiction, for example, are those who are trying to write for it. (I really don’t know...just throwing out the theory.) We boost our popularity by marketing to other spec fic friends. We try to impress each other on message boards, we attend conferences, we proofread each others' work and offer sound advice. We even have our own little versions of the Academy Awards. But when, if ever, do we become relevant outside our own tiny, insulated circle? Are we so entrenched in our culture that we miss that extra something special that makes us interesting to outsiders?

Some writers do it. Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Anne Rice, for example. There are many others. But most of us will be relegated to the midlist (if we manage to get there even) and the mags will continue to decline as people lose interest.

This isn't a moral statement or a call for change. I like being a wannabe spec fic writer and I adore my writer friends, and none of that's going to change no matter how small our world gets. But this is my journal and I can ponder if I want to.

And for the record, I'm one of those who no longer watches Miss America on TV. I could care less if it disappeared, because the pageant culture has produced an ideal that is nothing like mine, and I've gone off and joined a new social club.