Thursday night I found myself sitting in a concert hall in downtown Portland with hundreds of parents, cousins, nieces, nephews and a lot of high school-age friends all screaming their guts out for their favorite princess. Nope, it wasn’t the Britney Spears concert going on across town. I was in the frantic midst of a spectacle far more confusing — Portland’s annual Rose Queen Coronation Ceremony.
My friend’s little sister was a Rose Court princess in the ceremony and weeks ago she asked if I was interested in attending. Not knowing what I had agreed to, but naively curious, I walked into the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall last week expecting a superficial beauty pageant of the Miss Teen USA variety. And I was kicking myself for thinking I could watch such a pageant without feeling like I was violating some silent rule of feminism that denounces all beauty contests. I’ve always felt like a traitor watching Miss America pageants, but I grew up thinking these contests were harmless fun — something I could emulate with my Barbies.
And I was expecting the rose princesses to be synthetic high school-age dolls also. But the coronation was much more confusing because the young women weren’t made of plastic. They were chosen because of their outstanding community service achievements and were elected by their peers from 14 Portland-area high schools.
Realizing this in the midst of all the familial hollering, my feminist views on beauty pageants became mangled with my Girl Scout virtues and my head started to spin. Recognizing young women because of their philanthropic tendencies alone seemed even more old-fashioned than any token swimsuit (I’m sorry, “physical fitness”) contest.
I would expect a small town like Drain to recognize its outstanding high school humanitarian with a scepter and a cape, not a metropolis like Portland. And it’s such a big deal. I couldn’t believe the coronation was broadcast live on KOIN across western Oregon. And what’s more disturbing is that people who didn’t know anyone on stage actually watched and had a vested interest in which high school girl would represent their city. But then again, this is the city that is still riding high on the success of Gresham native Katie Harman, who won the Miss America title months ago.
Maybe it’s just because I’m not from the state. But I think honoring high school girls for their community service by freezing their grades a month and a half prior to graduation, clothing them with the sponsors’ digs and sticking them on a float with a crown is kind of outdated. And not because society shouldn’t recognize outstanding youth; on the contrary, we should encourage our youth leaders to continue their work. But doing so on such a grand scale only turns good Samaritans into celebrities and cynical people like me stop taking them seriously.
Hopefully this fate won’t befall my friend’s little sister, who actually won the whole thing, much to the delight of many frenzied audience members, including myself. I finally met Portland’s new Queen of Rosaria on Friday morning as she was brushing her teeth, preparing to be whisked off to do a morning television interview and begin the first day of her yearlong reign as Queen Leela. That awkward meeting over toothpaste will probably be my only brush with royalty in my lifetime. But I’m hoping Queen Leela can dispel some of the stereotypes that have been bequeathed to her by previous pageant winners and stay true to the anti-violence work that put her on such a rosy pedestal in the first place.
E-mail editorial editor Julie Lauderbaugh at [email protected]. Her opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the Emerald.