Mrs. Iowa!

Remember a long time ago when I told you all that my friend was going to the Mrs. Iowa pageant? Well, she WON!! Wow! I am so proud of her!

I gripe about my weight issues, and she is TINY via a lot of hard work. She does Pilates reformer a couple of times per week, then cardio and abs in addition, and she follows this crazy-hard diet. She told me about the pageant week and all of the stuff she did, and it is very safe to say that I will NEVER be a beauty queen.

It's long been known that beauty queens put vaseline on their teeth. This has long confused me, because I don't have trouble with my lips sticking to my teeth. However, I figured it was due to nerves (darn parasympathetic nervous system), but no! There's more! Those ladies do some crazy stuff to whittle their figures down to ultimate carved shapes. One of these things includes fluid flushing, which leaves them pretty dehydrated which leaves them non-sweaty (good in a pageant) but also with even less saliva and uber-sticky lips on teeth (not so good), hence the vaseline. Apparently in addition to Preparation H to reduce under-eye swelling, one can use Vagisil powder in makeup to reduce shine or something. Oh, and then there is an Epsom salts bath which apparently would solve an issue if one were constipated OR just trying to get rid of all superfluous bloat that digested food can cause.

And after all of that, can you imagine being under that kind of microscope? I don't even like to look at myself in the mirror in my swim suit, let alone let others JUDGE me and give me a SCORE on how I look in the thing. Even tinier, is my hair big enough, too big, shiny enough, too shiny, makeup too much, too little, dress perfectly tailored? Oof.

My friend went through all of that, and WON. Wow.