{ TEN-G ALLON TIAR A} “G
ood!” Dave
tells Charli. Better to get over nerves here in Loudoun County than in Las Vegas, where some queens get so anx- ious that, Kathy says, “you’ll see fringe shaking.” Charli can imagine. In the corner of her own living room, above the eight pairs of cowboy boots she has spray-painted pink, teal, red, blue, yellow — all the exact same Easter- egg shades as her hand-dyed Wrangler jeans, a mono-color effect designed to make the rodeo queen’s legs appear even longer — hang an Excel spreadsheet and a poster-size calendar, on which she has reverse-numbered the days, counting down to the pageant. But with the actu- al date looming so close, she has stopped looking at the calendar. Now, taking a deep, shaky breath,
the 23-year-old makes as if she’s tapping her cowboy hat and launches into her speech: “It’s a cowboy nation, and — ” “No!” Kathy calls. “Don’t touch your
hat. It’s a big no-no.” There are lots of big no-no’s involved
in this 55-year-old pageant. The first rule of queening, says one former Miss Rodeo America, is: “Never wear curlers in your pickup truck.” Second: No scuff marks. Anywhere. Contestants must polish even the bottoms of their boots. Third: Bare skin — a racy staple at every other beauty pageant in America — is, here, verboten. Evening gowns are long-sleeved, ankle- skimming leather affairs, with no slits up the back. Queens often waddle like pen- guins while wearing them. “Can I fake it?” Charli asks. “Yeah — ” Kathy says, unsure. “If you’re gonna touch it,” Tara says,
“then touch it.” “I think no touching the hat,” Kathy
says. “I say yes,” Tara says. “I say no,” Kathy insists, fixing Char- li with a look. “I’ve seen it done before,
and there’s always a collective gasp.” Charli starts again. She’s got a lot
riding on this speech: She must con- vince a mostly Western audience that she — a born-and-bred Easterner who looks like Cameron Diaz and hails from a Washington, D.C., exurb with an inverse ratio of cattle guards to Depart- ment of Defense commuters — deserves a place alongside every other Miss Rodeo America contestant. She must convince the ranchers and rural cow- boys whose workhorses excel at roping cattle and sheepherding, not trail riding and dressage, that she herself is an ac- complished, urban horsewoman whose prowess at changing lanes on the Belt- way only enhances her skills at getting a horse to change leads in mid-stride. Her speech, she hopes, will make the
point that not only is the East Coast vital to the Western way of life, but that the cowboy’s greatest staple — the workhorse quarter horse — traces its beginnings to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and “my great state, Virginia.” She finishes: “So, the next time you
swing a leg over your trusted mount, remember the words of Confederate Colonel Pickett: And today, you” — she juts a finger at her audience — “are from the old Virginia.”
12 The WashingTon PosT Magazine | november 14, 2010
The crowd applauds, then immedi-
ately critiques: “At the end,” Tara suggests, “leave out
the ‘and.’ Just say, ‘Today.’ ” “I had a little problem with all the
movement at the beginning but no movement at the end,” Kathy says. “And you’re doing this — ” Kathy affects a be- bop-backup-singer move with her hand at her hip. Implication: Stop it. “What do I do instead?” Charli asks. “Relax,” Dave says. “Oh,” Charli answers. “I don’t know if
I can do that.” “D
on’t make general- izations about these women,” warns his- tory professor Mi- chael Allen, author
of “Rodeo Cowboys in the North Ameri- can Imagination.” Being a rodeo queen means that “you can have it both ways: You get feminism and traditionalism.” That’s because a rodeo queen, un-
like contestants in most other beauty pageants — whether Miss America, Miss Universe or East Texas’s Yamboree Queen — has to possess what was once a real man’s skill: controlling a horse. “They have to ride horses better than 99.9 percent of the people in the arena
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