the slot machines and craps tables. “You can hear their shirt collars rustle,” notes Stevie Beehler, of Miss Rodeo America’s National Advisory Council. “I thought I’d died and gone to
W
Rodeo America pageant. She read farri- ers’ books on equine anatomy, diseases and temperaments. She compiled thou- sands of flashcards, and every morning, as soon as she woke, she would review between 50 and 100 of them, repeating the process before bed each night. She kept her rodeo queen handbooks nearby, flipping through often, practicing im- promptu questions (“Which is more im- portant: To be late but looking perfect, or to be on time?”) and forming opin- ions on current events (“Do you feel the Democratic and Republican Party con- ventions are a useful tool in the election system?”). Out in the arena, she rode a variety of horses, working to master her cowgirl prowess, described by Charli as: “Can you crawl up on anything and make it work?” But rodeo is mostly unknown in Vir-
ginia, especially Northern Virginia. Here, there has been no Miss Rodeo program to get her started: no ready-made rela- tionships with rodeo-queen donors, no custom-couture leather in the offing, no infrastructure already built and ready to buoy her through the year, straight through the pageant. She had to do most of that on her own.
heaven,” a man in a Faconnable button- down shirt says one day after the parade has passed. “I got up this morning and saw all of ’em together here. I thought I’d go down in the elevator with them, but no such luck.” Today the queens have escaped the
judges’ scrutiny, decamping to the same stage where Dean Martin and Wayne Newton once performed. Now semi- relaxed, they are rehearsing for the midweek fashion show, more slumped and casual than usual, their glorious out- fits newly mismatched and abrupt. The choreographer is barking orders about when to throw confetti, and Charli is lis- tening, biting at her manicured nails. “Did you notice,” Miss Rodeo Oregon
is saying, “Nebraska hit me in the head, and my hair was coming out? I was like: Do it again, and I’m gonna” — pause and a forced smile — “pat you on the back and tell you what a” — longer pause, tighter smile — “good job you’re doing!” The euphoria is ebbing. The adrena-
line can’t keep up. The pageant’s pace is a grind, and the women are wearing down. Charli, especially, is exhausted. Com-
peting for Miss Rodeo America requires relentless endurance and mindless grin- ning and glowing, even as a contestant’s lower back throbs, and she just flubbed a rodeo-history question, and her cow- boy hat has rubbed a raw, red spot the size of a silver dollar on her forehead. “Exude confidence!” Kathy tells
Charli again and again. “Panache!” pushes Tara, as she de-
scribes a former Miss Rodeo America contestant who wasn’t the very best at everything and even proffered dead- wrong answers to a few questions but beamed “mad confidence and serious panache” — and won. By midweek, Charli is giving her speech, first thing in the morning, and
hen the rodeo queens walk through the casi- nos to and from pageant events, every head in the place swivels up from
she nails every part of it, except that she sounds slightly lackluster, and her voice doesn’t have as much zing and in- flection as Kathy thinks it should. “She seemed a little tired,” Kathy says. And then Charli is in the wings,
readying for the modeling portion of the pageant, the fashion show. It’s Wednes- day night, Day Four, but with three more days still confronting the queens. “Five minutes …” a man is holler-
ing backstage. “Audio ready? … Video, are you ready? And — let’s have a good show!” Up goes the curtain, and the queens
flutter across the stage, posing, strut- ting, smiling, then racing to the wings for costume changes. About 550 of the auditorium’s 800 seats are full. Each queen is introduced, and Charli
is swirling, then taking an authoritative pause. Her face is taut and serious and doesn’t soften with a constant, simper- ing smile, as do the expressions of other, more experienced queens. Back in the dressing rooms, Miss
Mississippi stares at herself in the mir- ror, practicing her smile and a series of poses. Miss Rodeo Arkansas is trem- bling. “I have to go to the bathroom!” she says. “I’m going to cry.” “Don’t think about it,” Colorado says. Charli returns backstage and is
changing into her gown for the show’s finale when she realizes she can’t wear her boots like this. Working on one final sashay, she almost falls over. “Does anyone have an extra pair of
socks?” she calls to the nearly-empty green room. Most of the other women are already on stage. “My boots are too big.” The only ones around to hear are the chaperones, and not one offers to help. “I’ll just stuff the toes,” Charli says
gamely, ignoring the silence in the room. She reaches into a Subway plastic food bag, grabs the napkins and begins shoving them into the toes of her boots. “No, no,” one chaperone finally says,
pulling off her boot. “You’re going to give her yours?” asks
Miss Rodeo California, who has just ar- rived in the room. “Charla!” calls the current Miss Rodeo
America, Maegan Ridley, whom every- one at this pageant treats with breathless celebrity. Maegan comes out of her dress-
november 14, 2010 | The WashingTon PosT Magazine 15
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