Miss Instituto

Every year my high school ( instituto) celebrates its birthday.  It does so by cancelling classes (you correctly

hear a note of annoyance on the part of the killjoy voluntaria) and holding an “acto” with the usual dignitaries, folkloric dancing and student recitations of poems or essays about the importance of education, after which is held the Miss Instituto contest.  Note: not the Señorita Instituto contest. Last year I did not attend for some reason.  I’m sure I had another obligation, but I also remember being put off by a contest like that at our school.  I know, I know—in the states we have homecoming queens, same deal, but the pervasiveness of the glamour ideal for women, seen everywhere and almost always the sole ideal, is hard for a second wave feminist to see, let alone, participate in.  But this year I went to see what it was all about.

And I wouldn’t have missed it.  It defied expectations in spades.  First of all, boys participated as well as girls, the name of the event to the contrary.  Secondly, there were actually 3 different parts to both the boys’ and girls’ competitions.  One was the predictable runway parade in ball type gowns for girls and dressy clothes for the boys.  But there were two others parts.  In the first, both boys and girls wore home-made costumes celebrating the high school. They were elaborate with tall headdresses and trains and flowing capes painted with the symbols or scenes of the town and the school.  One dress was made entirely out of recycled soda cans and another out of all natural materials.  Some of the competitors were accompanied by little courtiers who lent more spleandor to the presentation.  The students paraded, the girls in impossible high heels, arms stretched to the side to show off the art work (and not incidentally, their bodies). They circled the sports center and then stopped to give a little speech (think Miss America on world peace).  The panel of judges filled out their score cards and the student audience went wild.

In the third part of the competition, the candidates paraded in school uniforms, but uniforms modified to fit their idea of some sexy academy in a city.  The girls’ skirts were super short, their shoes high heels, their blouses straining at the buttons.  They wore sassy little hats and carried cute handbags (in lieu of the ubiquitous backpacks) and sucked on lollipops a la Lolita. The boys, too, went sexy.  Some had ties loosely tied, for some reason a fashion item, suggestive of rebellion, maybe because ties aren’t worn here except by foreign businessmen. Everyone strutted, twirled, stood hand on one raised hip, other knee bent.    They threw kisses to the audience and the judges. And, again, there wild applause.

What do I think of all of this? I am still grumpy – and I should be—about the sexualization of girls in this culture.  Even some of the boys played into the sexual role, although some of the boys, mostly the younger ones had other fantasies, dressing as the great national hero Sandino in leather-ish jacket and big hat, or as soldiers with guns during the revolution. But the sheer inventiveness and sense of fun in some of the costumes in the first completion, the making of something spectacular out of paper, glue, paint and a little fabric, this was fun to see and it made me happy to think of my students using their imaginations, not only to design the costumes, but to figure out how to make them out of not much.

I’m not a fan of cancelled classes—but this one might have been worth it.  I’ll try to attach some pix.