At the end of the Miss BC World pageant on July 8, Langley's Natalie Standke, 20, clung to her competitors in euphoria. The top three awaited their fate on the Fort Langley school stage. Though the host was careful to say the judges would choose the winner on the basis of poise, personality, and character, Standke's classic lanky 'n' blond image stood out among her multiweight competitors. Like a taller, thinner, and toothier Scarlett Johansson, she would have been an easy pick for Miss BC in any generation.

The last interview: why did Standke think the judges chose her for the final three? The poised teen told her audience of about 200: “Because I'm genuine. Because I'm here for the right reasons. Because this is my chance to help in the community. Because I'm not just here to flaunt around like a beauty queen.”

When she won, Standke struck the stereotypical face-fanning, mouth-agape pose and hugged all the disappointed girls. Then the reigning Miss BC World, Sasha Abunnadi, placed the enduring pageant icon””a sparkling rhinestone tiara””on Standke's gleaming hair-do, and the second Miss BC World walked the length of the stage three times, elegantly, in four-inch heels.

Sasha Abunnadi took a break from waitressing in her family's restaurant to compete at Miss Canada World July 16. Alejandro Antequera/MWC Inc. photo.

Yes, this happened in 2006. Just a couple of weeks ago, in fact. It seems like a blast from the 1950s, but this is pageant month in Canada. Abunnadi, for example, strutted in a bikini for the Miss World Canada title on July 16 in Toronto, placed in the top 15, and won the interview award. In the same city on the same night, Canada's new Miss Panjaban was crowned. The reigning Miss Universe, Canada's Natalie Glebova, will hand over her tiara on Sunday night (July 23) at Donald Trump's Miss Universe event (to be broadcast at 9 p.m. on Citytv).

Canadian pageants are back with a vengeance. In the early 1990s, they had a near-death experience thanks in part to Canada's National Action Committee on the Status of Women. Miss Canada, the country's largest pageant (attracting audiences of five million in the 1970s) died in 1992. Miss Teen Canada perished in 1991. Miss Canadian University and Miss Dominion of Canada had already bit the dust a decade earlier. The Miss PNE pageant ceased in 1994. All across B.C., the small-town Miss Dairy Maid and Miss Harvest Queen pageants were replaced with non-gender-specific “ambassador” programs at about the same time.

Recently, though, new pageants have cropped up faster than pimples before a big date. In B.C. alone, young women can compete in more than 30 events, including Fairchild TV's Miss Chinese Vancouver (since 1996), the preliminaries for Miss India Worldwide Canada (2003), Miss Canada Teen Global (2003), and Miss BC World (2005, formerly the Miss Fraser Valley pageant, which started in 2003). Plus, B.C. hosts regionals for Canada's five open-entry national pageants, Miss Canada Universe, Miss Canada Galaxy, Miss Canada Globe, Miss Canada International, and, of course, Miss Canada World.

Irene Mathyssen, the federal NDP status of women critic, said she is outraged by the new pageants. She told the Georgia Straight she plans to raise her concerns at the parliamentary women's caucus.

“Just when you think you've gotten over the hump [in the fight for women's equality], something like this comes along,” Mathyssen, MP for London-Fanshawe, said. The two-term MP said she appreciates the notion that some beauty queens use their position to advocate for human rights, as Yaletown's Nazanin Afshin-Jam””the 2003 Miss World Canada and first runner-up to Miss World””does (see box below). But with female representation at just 21 percent in Parliament, Mathyssen thinks young women should take on their much-needed role as elected political leaders in the country instead. “Parading young women across the stage is not positive entertainment.”

SFU women's studies professor Mary Lynn Stewart is not willing to write off pageants. She believes the world has changed since the boomers were swimsuit-competition-aged. Not only have women's roles diversified, but TV viewers are also more savvy; they're not likely to stereotype women on the basis of a show.

“It offers women from not-well-to-do backgrounds an opportunity individually to use their corporeal capital to better their situations,” Stewart explained. “There's still a great deal to be gained by being a beautiful woman.”

For Sonia Ahmed, 27, there's more than just a personal gain at stake. Back in 2002, the former federal-government accountant naively started the Miss Pakistan World pageant in Toronto. Pageants are taboo in Islamic and modest Pakistan, she explained to the Georgia Straight in a phone interview, but rights-rich Canada offers the opportunity for the international diaspora to show off its goods. Ahmed said she regularly gets death threats, bomb threats, and angry calls from mosques and community leaders. Rather than backing off, though, she purposely provokes her detractors. For example, 2006 is the first year that Miss Pakistan will compete in Miss Bikini World.

Rising media star Linda Chung was named Miss Chinese Vancouver and Miss Hong Kong International.

“Canada's Constitution protects us whether we're standing in a bikini or a hijab,” she declared. “Every man must respect us the same. Canadian feminists view pageants as degrading, but it's the totally opposite thing for us. It's ammunition for us to conquer new land. Once pageants are normal in Pakistan, we won't need them anymore and we can get rid of them.”

Ahmed, who now works full-time on the pageant, sees the event as a fight for human rights. Standing on-stage in a revealing gown is an affront to fundamentalists, she said. That tension, she believes, breaks down barriers and extremism. Unlike the 2002 fiasco when 175 Nigerians died in Islamic protests against the Miss World pageant in that country, Toronto's Miss Pakistan pageant fills a 650-person house every year””peacefully.

“The first year, I thought that maybe 30 people would show up. I didn't even want to open the doors,” she recalled. “Then I peeked outside and there was a huge lineup! We had a blast. Now we go to pageants around the world, and we have to answer questions like, 'Don't you have to cover up?' and 'Do you know Osama bin Laden?'?”

That alone, she said, illustrates how desperately the world needs to see a new face on Pakistan, preferably a daring, modern female face. Last year, a Pakistan-based TV station broadcast the Toronto pageant back to the country. But, she pointed out, Pakistani leaders will not accept the live pageant there.

For Ahmed and the Miss Pakistan pageant, the medium is the message. In other words, the very fact that Pakistani women compete in a pageant demonstrates a kind of feminist revolution. In many more traditional Canadian pageants, though, the medium is largely stuck in prefeminist times, including the denigrated bikini contest. The winners' overt messages, however, are far more radical than 30 years ago.

Some, like Miss Universe's Glebova, spend their pageant year acting like a glamourous Stephen Lewis, lending their attention- getting presence to AIDS organizations worldwide. The comparison sounds trite, but it's not. Lewis, the United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, spent his adult life diligently earning the title, the fame, and the gravity to speak and be heard internationally. Glebova, conversely, flew from poverty as a 12-year-old Russian immigrant to become a passionate AIDS advocate, with the world's attention, in just 11 years. In the week leading up to World AIDS Day in 2005, Glebova visited Mumbai, India's AIDS orphans, a senior's home, and met with Governor Surjit Singh Barnal and others, all with global cameras focused on her. For a young woman who wants to make a difference, it's a tempting platform.

Others, such as Nazanin Afshin-Jam, use their title to legitimately fight for human rights overseas. Even at the local Miss BC World pageant, each contestant attached herself to a charity””Standke's was the Canadian Cancer Foundation, as her mom recently fought cancer””and presented a speech about her charity's work. During her reign, Abunnadi formed a Canadian Blood Services donation team to give blood directly and to raise awareness about donating in B.C. Eventually, the University College of the Fraser Valley biology student plans to work with Doctors Without Borders. Abunnadi's mother is French-Canadian, but her father is Arabic, from Palestine.

“Palestine is the largest refugee camp in the world. It hurts, not just because they're my relatives,” she said, noting that Afshin-Jam is her inspiration. “That is the first place I'd like to start helping people. It's appalling. It just hurts my heart.”

Some of Canada's big winners are not just there to, as Standke put it, “flaunt around like a beauty queen” .

This isn't entirely new. A 1961 Province story documented a shipload of international beauty queens travelling through Vancouver, many of them active with charities in their home countries.

Furthermore, several early beauty queens went on to substantial public careers. CBC anchorwoman Gloria Macarenko, B.C. Finance Minister Carole Taylor (described, in a July 22, 1963, article about the new Miss Toronto as “a pretty brunette of five feet six inches with 35-24-35 measurements” ), and groundbreaking Canadian labour leader Judy Darcy are all former contestants. Halle Berry was the first black woman to represent the U.S. at Miss Universe, in 1984. She went on to be the first black women to get an Oscar for best actress. Renowned for her love of shoes and political controversy, Philippines' “steel butterfly” , Imelda Marcos, was also a beauty queen. So was newscaster Diane Sawyer. Even antigay activist and singer Anita Bryant wore a crown as Miss Oklahoma 1958.

Four decades ago, though, the “benevolent” nature of pageants didn't save them from the wrath of young activists. Pageants' enduring antiwoman reputation continues to be strong, due in part to local history.

The landmark event was the 1970 Miss Canadian University pageant. Miss SFU stepped aside to let the independent Vancouver Women's Caucus send a protest candidate instead, Janiel Jolley. The pageant organizers heard about it ahead of time, though. They banned Jolley from the nationally televised event. (And that was the end of the Miss SFU contest.)

Simultaneously, the Women's Liberation Movement in Toronto was also planning to disrupt the pageant. The organizers begged Darcy, then 19, to be their undercover mole.

“It was really, really scary,” she told the Straight, recalling her decision to enter as Miss York University. “When you're 19 and searching for your own identity and what you believe in, and challenging social values, and then you go strutting your stuff in a totally foreign environment, it was quite scary.”

But she did it. Darcy, now the secretary-business manager at B.C's Hospital Employees Union, borrowed a sari””no one she knew owned a formal gown””relearned how to wear makeup, and hit the runway on national TV. She remembered being introduced as “a brunette wearing a sari from York University, who is interested in child care, and a sociology major” .

Then the plan kicked in. Jolley, leading a gang of young women, marched to the sound stage and demanded the right to speak. The judges told her no. Jolley shouted, “This pageant exploits women!” That was Darcy's cue. Out from a “bevy of beauties” , as she remembers an article stating, she stood up and declared: “It's true! This is a meat market, and it does exploit women!”

The cameras shut off, and Darcy left the studio with her fellow revolutionaries. Sheepishly, she remembers that just after the cameras started rolling again, the semifinalists' names were announced. Darcy had made it to the next level.

“When we were young, it was something that we felt strongly about. As a middle-aged woman, it's not something that tears me apart anymore,” she said, explaining why there's so little political chatter about the reemergence of pageants. “Then, the women's movement was in its infancy. We were trying to assert a new place for ourselves in society; everything was in upheaval. There wasn't a sense of anything being established as it is today.”

Darcy acknowledges that today's 19-year-olds don't have the same issues as she did. But she's not sold on the idea that pageants offer a legitimate political platform for young women or that they are no longer socially problematic. Equal pay, constitutional rights, and human-rights commissions have all eroded in the past 10 years, she said, simultaneous with the rise in pageants.

Today, Vancouver's biggest new pageant, Miss Chinese Vancouver, is a prototypical 21st-century event. Organizer Vivien Louie told the Straight that it does the opposite of exploiting women; instead, it gives them three months of prepageant training in public speaking, grooming, fitness, and other confidence builders. By the time the pageant rolls around, the contestants are unrecognizable from their former selves, she said. Not because they're beautiful on the outside alone, but because of their poise, a lifelong valuable skill.

“We train them to be more confident and to realize their strengths,” Louie said. “They don't realize their potential until they try.”

The results tell that story. In the past six years, four Miss Chinese Vancouvers have also won the Miss Hong Kong International pageant: Bernice Liu (2001), Shirley Zhou (2002), Linda Chung (2004), and Leanne Li (2005). All went on to successful media careers in Hong Kong.

If this is third-wave feminism, maybe it's time for a fourth wave, according to gender studies professor Allyson Jule. The pageants of the 1950s were pure patriarchy, she said; in the 1970s, they were seen as oppressive. Now, young women have been dealt an extremely complicated set of gender cards to play, and they're getting fumbled, she told the Straight.

“They've got raunch culture, girl power, terrorism to deal with,” said Jule, whose own daughter was the Miss New Westminster ambassador two years ago. “Pageants are a celebration of young female beauty, which is celebratory. It's part of all the things that make us human. It's when it becomes the sole identifier of someone's human experience that it becomes a problem.”

Jule differentiated between B.C.'s small-town ambassador programs, which focus on civic duties, and typical beauty pageants. But an organizer of the Miss New Westminster pageant, former New West mayor Helen Sparkes, recalled that young women were not interested in simply being ambassadors.

“When the New West pageant changed from being a Miss to being an ambassador, we couldn't get the girls to join,” she told the Straight. “We tried to get boys, but they wouldn't come. The girls wanted to be a Miss and wear the tiara. So we called it the Miss New Westminster Ambassador” .

Sparkes, who is a former physical-education teacher, said she's noticed a decline since the 1960s in the things that make girls beautiful: cleanliness, posture, confidence, social graces, and tidy clothes. When pageant participants arrive, she said, they're often dressed inappropriately and can't hold a conversation. The pageant's training pushes them toward a more comfortable poise.

“It allows them another way of being, other than being a squirrelly teenager,” she said, noting that contestants must remove their piercings. Sparkes, who's been involved in the pageant since her first daughter won in 1982, defends the form. “In the feminist movement, the pendulum swung too far left; now it's swinging back to centre. You can be a girly girl again. Clothing now is much more feminine than it's been in a long time. And there's still that princess thing there. The little girls all still want to grow up to be princesses.”

During pageant month in Canada, any finger-wagging or encouragement by thinkers over 30 is a little irrelevant. It is the participants””Standke, Ahmed, Glebova, and even Darcy 36 years ago””who govern this sphere.

Standke has no global political aspirations yet. Locally, she would like to use her title to convince nightclubs to start using Las Vegas–style lids on their drinks to prevent date-rape drugging. Friends of hers have been drugged, so, she said, like her mother's cancer, “it's an issue that's close to my heart.”

Unlike high heels, which she's been wearing regularly since Grade 8, Standke is new to the political world. Her chance at great influence is strong, though. One year from now, she'll compete at Miss World Canada. If she wins, she'll go on to 2007's Miss World event. That show attracts 2.2 billion viewers, according to its Web site. It is second only to the World Cup. That means more viewers than President Bush's White House statements, more viewers than the Queen's Christmas address, more viewers even than the movie King Kong.

Can any aspiring 20-year-old MLA candidate or medical student say that?