This past Saturday was Transgender San Francisco’s annual Cotillion, a formal evening featuring dinner, entertainment and the contest for Ms. TGSF —who’s the public ambassador of the group. Back in December, one of the board members talked me into running. I wasn’t really eager, since this year looks to be a hectic one with work, but once I committed to do it, I did a bit of talking to various people from the different trans communities to see how I be a catalyst for some bridge-building. (Yeah, I think every Ms. TGSF candidate focuses on building bridges… but that does sort of go hand-in-hand with being a public ambassador.)
To be honest, I’m not particularly thrilled with the “beauty pagent” aspect of the Ms. TGSF contest. If it were up to me, I’d drop the “active wear” and “evening wear” segments—which if nothing else are usually booooring—and keep the pre-Cotillion interview, the final question and the entertainment segment (which at least in theory helps predict how you’ll do in front of crowd.) Then I’d use the remaining time to make the Cotillion more of a party.
The interview, held the weekend before the pagent, went well although I’m not sure I always told the judges the politic answer. But I decided I that they’d have to take me or leave me as I am. The day of the Cotillion itself was hectic. Be at the hall in South San Francisco at noon for a run-through, run home and then back again because no one told me to bring the narrations I’d written for my segments to the run-through, then go up to San Francisco to have my drag mother do my make-up and pick up wigs for the evening. Then back down to the hall again to be there for a final rehearsal just before the doors opened.
The hall was nice—comparable to a hotel conference room—with a nice buffet, although I had to grab food and then go eat backstage. So I didn’t really get much of a chance to meet and greet people, including my friends Marla and Rachel who where there was a large group from the Sacramento Gems group. Back stage, the MC, Tommi Rose who runs a store for drag queens down in Palm Springs, had brought along some jewelry that she was planning to show to some of the queens in attendance. Some of the pieces were gold-toned rhinestone necklaces/earrings/bracelets, which are really hard to find, so I took advantage of the opportunity to spend more money than I care to admit. But I was able to wear one of the sets for my evening wear segment. Once the contest started it was rushing from one costume change to another. Since I thought the active wear and evening wear bits are a bit silly, I wrote a fairly silly—and hopefully amusing—bits for the narration that’s down while you’re posing on stage. I thought I looked far more polished, than the sole other contestent, Lisa, who’s one of the TGSF board members.
For the talent segment, at my drag mother’s (mentor) suggest, I did “Rose’s Turn” from “Gypsy” (it’s the climax of the musical, where Mama Rose, the archetypal domineering stage mother, has a nervous breakdown). I was a little intimidated by the song, in which Rose alternately fantasizes about her own lit-up runway and cheering audience, wallows in self-pity and the awareness she’s driven away everyone she loves, and finally admits that the it was really her dream that she was pushing her daughters to fulfill. It’s a lot of emotion range and definitely tougher than anything I’d done before. And if I say so myself, I abso-fucking-lutely nailed it.
I did bobble the final question, although I drew a question that was a bit out of left-field: what we I do as Ms. TGSF do to help reduce the high unemployment rates among some trans people. Annoying Lisa drew a question about the ENDA debacle, an issue that’s near and dear to my heart, and one I’m sure I would’ve answer better. But still I thought I owned the stage that night and did reasonably well in the interview, so while I was ambivalent about winning, I thought I deserved to win.
But when I got handed the Ms. Congeniality trophy, I knew what was coming next—and sure enough Lisa was crowned the winner. I’ll be generous and assume Lisa must have interviewed better. But it’s the other things that happened that really pissed me off. There wasn’t the usual statement that the runner-up will fill-in for Ms. TGSF if needed, there wasn’t the usual “let’s thank our other contestants” to let me exit the stage gracefully, there was no request to join Lisa in official photos (in fact no official photo whatsoever)—and I haven’t received any sort of formal thank you from TGSF (although I was thanked by individual board members). Needless to say that’s left a bad taste in my mouth.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought I should have won—when I went to Marlena’s afterwards, there were a lot of pissed off drag queens (word of what happened apparently spread fast).
On the good side, I really stretched as a performer and apparently impressed a number of people. Plus I got an awesome make-over from my drag mother. The first pic is down in the basement of Marlena’s after she did my make-up—it was mostly so I’ve got a reference to try to recreate it. It’s very dramatic and fabu-licious. This was my hair for the active wear and talent segments.
The second pic is my formal up-doo—taken around 3 a.m. when I got home from the Cotillion, so I was little tired at that point. It shows my formal wear and one of the new jewelry combos I bought from Tommi (that’s actually the more sedate of the two necklaces—the other is far more blingy).
So I guess that on the whole I’m glad I did it, but I’m not sure I’m interested in doing it again.