Ever since attending Blobfest last year, I had ONE goal- one goal which seemed to eclipse every other aspiration I’d had before it, and since- and that was to become MISS Blobfest. It became a running joke among friends, that, despite all the otherwise incredible things I’d accomplished this past year, everything paled in comparison to my ambition to achieve this kooky, kitschy dream.
I’d long been obsessed with vintage “Miss” pageants, and retro brand-babes and my fixation only grew after publishing a piece about Jayne Mansfield last March. In the course of my research I’d learned that, prior to her underdog success as a starlet in the shadow of Marilyn Monroe, Mansfield initially asserted herself in the public eye by competing in- and winning- various odd beauty pageants.
Before she was the notorious “platinum-pated movie siren”, she was, respectively, “Miss Magnesium Lamp”, “Miss Photoflash”, “Miss Hot Dog” and “Miss Fire Prevention Week” (among others). And the list of stars who dipped their toes into peculiar pageantry before diving into the limelight doesn’t stop there- Joi Lansing was an uncredited “Miss Anti-Triskaidekaphobia”; Mamie Van Doren kicked off her career as “Miss Eight Ball”, the Three Stooges, Geene Courtney enjoyed her turn as “Miss Cheesecake” and “Miss Sausage Queen” and singer Ruth Gillis sleepily donned her sash as “Miss Slumber Siren” during a 1955 Sealy Slumber Party- even Marilyn Monroe, herself, briefly endured as “Miss Medical Center Aides”. Perhaps my favorite of all of them, though, and the first to really launch my love of these ladies, were the “Miss Atomic” pageants.
From “Miss Atomic Blast”, showgirl, Candyce King, and her bombshell up-do- fashioned from toilet paper rolls and hairspray cans- to “Miss A-Bomb”, (Paula Harris), to dancer, Linda Lawson’s impromptu ordaining as “Miss Cue” at the Sands by Servicemen fresh off a synonymous atomic operation at a Nevada Test site in 1955, the compulsion to crown in the wake of atomic achievement seemed crucial. But the most famous of them all and my personal brand inspiration, was Lee Merlin, who unofficially earned the title of “Miss Atomic Bomb” after Vegas News Bureau photographer, Don English, attached a mushroom cloud applique to her bathing suit and snapped a picture of the now legendary Copa Girl in the desert.
Taking the stage on Friday the 13th, on the 60th anniversary of The Blob inside the very same Colonial Theatre which the Blob attacks in the now famous flick, I couldn’t help but think of these women, existing uniquely and eternally in their own weird, bygone time-capsules, and feel an odd affinity with them. When I was announced as the winner, for a fraction of a second, it was like the barrier in time and space, itself, had thinned, and I was able to straddle both the past and the present, coexisting between these two eccentric epochs while being comically serenaded by the evening’s host, Mr. Lobo. While I may not share similar aspirations of fame as Mansfield or Monroe, I wonder if they felt similarly when they held these strange spotlights, taking in the absolute absurdity, while ridiculously reveling in the bizarre beauty of it all.
