Just Like a Woman

Kirk Berg (Miss Great Plains): Somebody asked me about six months before Pageant if I was going to do it, and I said, Nooooooo. I really dont need to be getting into drag every night. And here we are, God knows how long later.

Actually, since Nov. 20, 2003, it's a total of 22 weeks, 66 performances later – and counting. Which is pretty awesome, considering that your average Austin theatre production runs three or four weeks, only nine to 12 performances. But not every Austin production is like this Austin production. This one has campy gowns, a smarmy emcee, interpretive dance, and six beauty pageant contestants (Miss West Coast, Miss Great Plains, Miss Industrial Northeast, Miss Bible Belt, Miss Deep South, and Miss Texas) all played by men.

Admit it, guys. You love women. You love the way they move, the way they talk, and especially the way they look. Especially the way they look when they really get into it, really put themselves out just for you – the make-up, the hair, the clothes. Isn't there just something about a pair of heels that makes a woman's legs look that much longer? Isn't there something about make-up that makes a woman look that much more like a woman?

Men, haven't you wondered exactly what that would be like? To get more in touch with your feminine side? You can do it if you want to, you know (and if you never have – you know you want to).

To that end, just in time for the holidays, here's a gift of a guide to assaying the eros of the woman in you, provided by experts: the men who bring you Naughty Austin's Pageant, the beauty contest now strutting its stuff onstage at Arts on Real.

Tyler Rhodes (Miss Bible Belt): This make-up is doing a killer on my face. Its breakin out bad.

Austin Chronicle: You need to scrub and use some moisturizer afterward.

Miss Great Plains: Try this concealer. Put the base on over it.

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First Part: Make-up

By far the most complicated part. Do this, and you'll have new respect for all things female.

Step 1: Base (that stuff that evens out your skin and makes your derma look perfect). Put it on heavy if youve got the beard thing going strong. Apply to the shoulders and chest if youre showing some skin. Powder before or after, or both, or wait until youve added more layers.

Step 2: Peel the last strip of glue off your lashes and put new glue on, to let em get tacky. (You thought those long, luscious things were real, did you, boys?)

Step 3: (In whatever order you prefer.) Blush (for that fresh and girlish look). Use two colors, one darker, then one lighter, to highlight facial infrastructure. Then, eyeliner, eye shadow (dark to light on this, too). Finally, lip liner, then lipstick or lip gloss or both!

Step 4: Fix those lashes in place.

Step 5: Powder again, if necessary, then touch up with a bit more blush, because that powder will take your look down a bit. (And the look is everything, people.)

Step 6: If youre wearing something cut low (and just who, exactly, doesn't want that?), shade your chest for more cleavage. (And more cleavage is coming soon, have no doubt.)

AC: Are those your breasts? What are those made of?

Miss Great Plains: Cotton balls and panty hose.

Miss Bible Belt: You made those, didnt you?

Miss Great Plains: With the nipples and everything.

Bryan Schneider (Miss West Coast): I use these: orange Nerf basketballs, cut in half. We have some green soccer balls, too.

Chase Renouf (Miss Texas): Count the layers, boys. One, two, three, four, five.

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Second Part: Undergarments

In any order: bra (insert breasts at any point in the process); tight underwear (you'll know why in a second), tights, and/or panty hose. You may need several layers, depending on, umm, the size and malleability of your, umm, equipment.

AC: You guys don't seem to enjoy getting into drag. Do the gentlemen in the other dressing room?

[Huge laughter.]

Miss West Coast: I think its distinctly more possible.

Miss Great Plains: Their room tucks and then paints. We paint and then tuck.

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Most Interesting Part: Tucking

Gentlemen, your equipment is different from that of the female, so if you really want that babe kinda ambience, you gotta do some adjusting, some ... shifting. This involves tucking your manhood back into your, well, crack. A thong helps, but believe it or not, if you really focus, you can just sorta pull it back up under and in, wear a bunch of layers (like Miss Texas), and keep your thighs pinched together. No high leg kicks, though. Stuff tends to drop back.

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Last Part: Clothing and Accessories

Step 1: Dress first, if it has to go on over your head (you have a wig coming, dont forget).

Step 2: Accessories (earrings, bracelets, necklaces, rings you know the drill)

Step 3: Shoes (and boy, are these ever important make sure they match your dress)

Step 4: Wig (secured with bobby pins)

Gloves, if you're wearing them, last, because you can't do anything if you have gloves on.

That's it. And if you don't have a whole new outlook on what it takes to be an American Girl, you just haven't been paying attention. Now, get out there, spend a few hundred dollars, sit in front of a mirror for 45 minutes, and do it, gentlemen. Do it for you.

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Pageant runs through Jan. 1 at Arts on Real, 2826 Real. For more information, call 472-ARTS or visit www.artsonreal.com.

Pageant

Arts on Real, through Dec. 31

Running Time: 1 hr, 45 min

Anyone reading this undoubtedly is familiar with beauty pageants, those annual rites of American womanhood (and, increasingly, girlhood) in which the contestants participate in various "competitions" (as if some objective standard actually is involved) in front of a panel of "judges" (usually celebrities hired to draw more attention to the event) in order to win fabulous "prizes" ("scholarships" are often mentioned, as well as actual items you'd most often find on The Price Is Right) and take home the title of Miss This That or the Other City, State, Country, or World. If anything ever in the entire history of the planet was ripe for satire, it's beauty pageants.

So you have to hand it to Albert Evans, Frank Kelly, Robert Longbottom, and Bill Russell, the gentlemen who conceived, penned, and scored this show being revived by Naughty Austin. Its original local incarnation garnered the Austin Critics Table Award for Best Musical of 2004, and the majority of the original all-male cast returns for this revival.

That's right. All-male. We're talking drag here, folks, men playing women. And while there may have been, at some point in the past, a musical featuring men in drag in a beauty pageant, if there was, I never heard tell of it. Besides, we don't need more than this extravaganza to prove that men can be beautiful, too.

There's so much to say, I don't really know where to begin. Perhaps with Steve Saugey on synthesizer, tuxed up, bearded and bouffanted, playing like a man possessed. Perhaps with Zach Thompson, the other male (umm, nondrag male? umm, overtly male?) member of the cast, playing emcee Frankie Cavalier with the panache and style of a Bob Barker wet dream. Perhaps with the gorgeous contestants themselves – Kirk Berg, Brian Jensen, Valdo Perales, Chase Renouf, Tyler Rhodes, and Bryan Schneider – all of whom bring an expert femininity and surprising empathy to their roles, whether participating in spokesmodel, evening gown, swimsuit, or talent categories (especially Schneider, who does an interpretive dance to end all interpretive dances). Or perhaps with director Stuart Moulton, who, with designer Blake Yelavich, has created a pink and green, satiny, chiffon dream of a set and of a show. And perhaps best of all, you, Mr. and Mrs. Audience Member, choose the winner. Get ready to whoop and holler.

What can I say? Shining, sparkling, slinky, spicy, scintillating, and – dare I use the word – sexy. If you don't believe me, take a gander at Chase Renouf's Miss Texas and tell me that she, umm, he, uh, Chase isn't sexy.

You go girls. You go.