SARASOTA'S MISS MAILAWAY!

Back in the Fifties every small town in America had beauty contests and Sarasota was no exception.  This was the time when the city wanted to attract more people to its beautiful coastline and sugary white sand so each year the Sarasota Herald Tribune would send out its mail-away edition to people all over the USA.  A very thick edition heralded the fabled beauty of the city's location, its exquisite Spanish architecture, the Ringling Art Museum, its Equity theater, the Palmtree Playhouse and The Players, its community theater and most of all its miles of pristine, completely unspoiled beach, its sand so white and pure that it looked as if no one had ever walked on its snowy perfection.  (An unlooked for consequence of hoards of Northerners moving to our untouched shores was that our virgin beaches lost their purity and tacky motels and eventually high rise condos sprang up, completely hiding the beaches.)

But in the Fifties we did not foresee the loss of natural beauty that lay ahead.  The Herald Tribune held a yearly contest to choose Miss Mailaway, a local beauty who would grace the cover of its special edition.  Now the contest did not pretend it was interested in a girl's talents, speaking ability or social causes--it was a beauty contest plain and simple.  Young women in their late teens walked around the pool at the Lido Casino in one-piece bathing suits and spike heels.  After each smiling parade around the pool, some unfortunate girls would be eliminated.  Now there were rules, but they were unspoken.  For instance, there were no Black girls in the contest, nor were there Asian or Hispanic girls and certainly no young women of Middle Eastern descent.  Exotic or unusual beauty was ignored. Contestants were to be conventionally pretty, full-figured (this was the time of Marilyn Monroe, not Twiggy) and very, very tan.  (I tried to get a tan, but I only got skin cancer.)  While there were no women of color in the contest, most of the girls looked like Halle Berry--golden brown skin with Caucasian features.  Now Miss Mailaway was a big deal and practically the whole town attended.  Large pictures of the contestants in bathing suits were featured in the paper nearly every day.  Needless to say, my friends and I all loved the contest.  I was forever barred because I was painfully skinny and shockingly pale.  And of course I still had no breasts.  But the fact that I didn't qualify did nothing to dampen my ardor. (I also attended the Miss Sarasota, Miss Florida and Junior Miss contests.)

The contest that was the most fun for my friends and me was the year that we knew most of the contestants.  As all the girls paraded around the pool for the first time, we knew immediately who would be eliminated early on--the plain, awkward girls, the too short girls, the ones with skinny legs or the wrong hair or an ugly bathing suit and most of all, the girls who lacked that vital attribute, a really good tan.  The judges were four callow youths who formed a bad barbershop quartet, but who knew the rules and eliminated those girls who didn't fit in including our friend Ginger, a girl of dark, dangerous beauty who probably scared the pants off our quartet.  The evening progressed with few surprises and it became clear who the two top contenders were to be--Sandra and Lucy--two girls we all went to school with.  They were only two years older than I was, but infinitely more worldly (of course, the only females less worldly than I were cloistered nuns.)  Sandra was a redhead and Lucy a brunette, but they both wore white suits on their spectacular, well-tanned figures.  At last all the girls were eliminated but Sandra, Lucy and a blonde in a black bathing suit no one paid any attention to.  The final three circled the pool one last time, smiling and drinking in the approval, the catcalls, the wolf whistles and the wild applause.

The second runnerup was announced to the surprise of none--the blonde.

The first runnerup was announced--Lucy, the voluptuous brunette.  But, alas, Lucy obviously thought she had won because she squealed and stepped forward, smiling broadly and waiting for her bouquet or crown or whatever they planned to give her.  But poor Lucy had not won; Sandra was Miss Mailaway.  To her credit, Lucy stepped back, looking confused and Sandra, also looking a bit confused, stepped forward.  I had thought Sandra should win, but I felt sorry for Lucy who later entered the Miss Sarasota contest and came in third.  Years later I ran into Sandra who was running the Green Stamp redemption store right next to Publix. While still beautiful, she looked too thin and a bit drawn.  I asked her if she had been Miss Mailaway several years ago.

"It wasn't several years ago.  It was many, many years ago," she said, not smiling.  She took my books of Green Stamps and slapped them on the counter.