There she is!

I spent the weekend hanging out with my BFF in North Carolina. We had grand plans that fell through - more on that after I get some photographic evidence - but we managed to have a grand old time.

Like a pal who introduces you to an illicit drug, darling BFF introduced me to Miss America: Reality Check on TLC.

Oh dear.

I've written before about my love/hate relationship with Miss America. I'm a feminist with a women's studies minor, but doggone it, I love me some pageants, err, I mean scholarship competitions.

Yes, I am a complicated woman.

Miss America is this Saturday, and Miss America: Reality Check gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how the pageant, err, scholarship program is attempting to reinvent and reinvigorate itself. The contestants were basically told to forget all the pageant, err, scholarship program robotics that they had honed to get to this point. They were taught to walk like semi-normal human beings. And they were given make-unders to rid them of their hair helmets.

So, basically, they were given permission to be real people. And some of them didn't know how to do it.

This, I can understand. When you are told how to talk and walk and who to be and you pretty much master it, it has to come at the price of your personality. My cousin had a college friend who was Miss Illinois, and she said it took about two years for her friend to regain her pre-pageant personality.

Why are we trying to turn our young women into future Stepford Wives? And why do I continue to be so fascinated by the women who manage to pull it off and/or succumb to the pressure? Is it because they appear to have all their shit together, and that's one thing that I simply can't manage in my life as a real, live woman?