Beauty Queens is a satirical dark comedy with subversive tendencies, eventually revealing strong humanistic ideas.  While aimed at a young adult readership, it will also appeal to older readers.  The unabridged audiobook is performed by the author, and has lots of sound effects added to it, making it more interesting than a standard audiobook performance.  It has fake ads between sections of the book, a special sound to signify footnotes, and at one point, a recording of an earlier part of the book playing in the background during a later part of the story.  The book is posed as a product of the Corporation, a large media company that puts on TV shows, makes pop music, toys, feminine hygiene products, and beauty pageants.  It also turns out to have strong political goals.  But by the end of the book, readers should have a large dose of skepticism about large corporations. 

A plane full of queen beauty queens crashes on a desert island.  Several of them survive the crash, and they have to learn to live from what few resources are available in the forests and sea, and to protect themselves from the local wildlife.  At first, they seem too preoccupied by their beauty to have much chance, but they prove their strength in the face of adversity.  It turns out that the group of teenagers is diverse, including two who are minorities, one or two who are not completely straight, and one who has a penis.  Each girl represents a different state, and has her own story of how came to represent their state for the coming pageant, and they are not all enthusiastic about the values of womanhood embodied in the competition.  We come to understand their lives and the pressures that have made them who they are.  While there are tensions between the girls, eventually they come to work together as a group and to accept each other’s differences. 

Is this novel any good? The story is definitely interesting and unusual.  It’s readiness to push progressive themes is both fun and admirable.  The characters do have some depth and there is good comedy there.  There is a lot of death and violence, and some readers may find that hard to deal with.  While it is feminist in intent, it does trade on a lot of stereotypes of women, so it is easy to take it out of context.  Ultimately, the story is a romp with some twists and there is a lot of silliness, but it is enjoyable. 

© 2014 Christian Perring

Christian Perring, Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York