Try As We Might, It's Impossible to Exhaust This Topic

Last week the girls and I were enjoying lunch with my parents at Tribu Grill, the newish Filipino restaurant on the border of Millbrae and San Bruno (check out Corinne's review—complete with pictures!—here), when we were accosted by two people at two different times demanding to know if my daughters were Filipino and why they were not signed up for the Little Miss Something Something pageant at the Something Something Fiesta. Sayang, sayang, they clucked. They're so preeeety.

Oh, sweet irony.

And there was my poor mother being all gracious and whatnot while I scowled and tried to keep from screaming something like, "Do you not read my blog?! Do you not know that beauty pageants are a Nesting Ground pet peeve and that you should not pester the Nesting Ground Mistress with such nonsense, especially when the Nesting Ground Mistress is partaking in some really good deep-friend bangus? What is wrong with you?! Beg mercy from the Nesting Ground Mistress! Beg mercy and away with you, away!"

But instead I said, "They're too busy reading to participate in a beauty pageant." And then I proffered up a pained and insincere smile. Unable to form a suitable response, the female accoster mumbled something I didn't understand and walked away. I'm not sure why, but I actually felt sort of sorry for the second misguided person—a man this time— who showed up about ten minutes later. Maybe because he was fairly old and had tattooed eyebrows and eyeliner. Make of this what you will. With him, I performed the same smile and just said, "Oh, that's nice of you to say. Thank you."

As I'm sure you recall (*sarcasm*) from this post, though, I do wax nostalgic about objectification of the sepia-toned sort. So I suppose it's fitting that I was looking for something this morning and, instead, found my maternal lola's official "Rizal Queen" candidate photo, circa 1930:


Also fitting that it was this time last year that Gladys and Joanne were just about to unleash the Beauty & Power conference...