Beauty pageant bets acquit themselves well under pressure

LAST SUNDAY night’s Binibining Pilipinas finals were pretty much par for the course in these pageant-addled isles, except for its relative lack of gaffes—on the beauties’ part.

Most pageant shows are rife with blunders and booboos as, overcome by nerves and exhaustion and sometimes a limited vocabulary, quite a number of contestants can be expected to inadvertently make pathetic ninnies of themselves by blurting out hapless quotable-quotes like, “I’m proud of my bow-legged” and “I thank you for all, that’s all, thanks.”

SHAMSEY Supsup will represent the country in the Miss Universe pageant this year.

Quite amazingly, none of the finalists last Sunday got themselves in as much trouble as that. In fact, only around three started to talk themselves into a tight verbal corner, but even they were able to extricate themselves without getting grammatical egg all over their pretty faces.

Even better, some finalists were able to delight the crowd with quotable zingers that spoke well of their mental alertness and ability to think and perform under pressure.

Answers

In fact, some of their answers were so “profound” that they sounded like high priestesses of some new cult or religion elegantly enlightening their constituencies.

On the other hand, we felt that some of the jurors could be faulted for asking questions that were too deep or convoluted for the occasion. Hey, distinguished ladies and gents, it’s only a beauty contest, not a meeting of the UN Security Council! So, cool it, and give the poor, harassed beauties a break.

Speaking of the board of judges, we thought that the standouts were Charo Santos-Concio and former Miss Universe Margie Moran-Floirendo, both of whom looked lovely and said and did exactly the right things.

On the debit side, the show’s introduction of contestants was too visually hectic, making it difficult for viewers to get a good first impression of each candidate’s potential for winning.

Male host, Derek Ramsay, was also quite a caution, projecting rather stiffly and not helping his female counterpart, KC Concepcion, warm up the proceedings.

Ramsay’s worst moments came during the key Q & A portion, which he handled. To get the girls to relax before each question, he would much too often ask, “Do you feel nervous?”—thereby, of course, achieving the opposite effect!

Still and all, the (long) evening went comparatively well, largely due to this year’s batch of contestants, who were generally lovely, projected well, spoke sensibly—and thus gave the audience quite a number of different bets to root for.

In the future, however, the pageant would do even better if more of its judges were chosen, not just for their affiliation to this or that well-connected organization or institution, but were also known for their proven expertise at selecting the worthiest bets, to represent the country abroad.