Welcome to the Mrs. America report, with your flash reporter, Mostly Jenine.  You will see from the photo below what I chose to wear, with the guidance of all of you (thanks to Beth for the tip on the chicken cutlets).  When I left the house my hair was huge, but it is unseasonably humid in Tucson, so this is where it ended up.  A special thanks to my seat dates Keith and Veronica, who tolerated my note taking and general running commentary.

             

It was an interesting and amusing evening, with all kinds of TV filming tricks, amazing dresses and costumes and some reasonably impressive women representing "married America".  The women ranged from age 23 to 44, 39 went to college and 38 were mothers.  They appeared (at least to me) to be accomplished, poised, and well spoken.  The events they participated in (and in some cases competed in) included golf, trivia, barrel racing, and cooking.  It was, at times, a little surreal and quite a bit pageanty, but entertaining all the while.  And it was a lovely evening under the stars so that was nice too.

There are so many little things I wanted to tell you, so I will try and stream them all in.  I have decided I would love to have a life producer, you know a bossy guy in a headset who will tell me where to stand and generally precede me into any room shouting "Big Applause People!" to encourage people to cheer my arrival.  There are so many things that we probably should cheer about each day, and we just forget to tell people to clap with us.

As lovely as they are, mermaid dresses (the big flare with a short train) are a bad choice on a slippery stage in high clear plastic heels.  There was a fair amount of tripping (small tripping, no big splats).  White dresses aren't flattering on as many people as they think.  Even when you have had alot of time to plan and think about your dress, you don't always make a good choice. 

In a group of women who have a disproportionately high percentage of enhanced bosoms, brown swim wear with gold detailing on said bosoms probably wasn't the best choice.  I mean for those of us who need chicken cutlets to fill our dress tops, the gold could be a good visual trick, but on most of these women it was near blinding, in cases.  And we were sitting in the way back.  I almost feel bad for the people who were up close, like poor Phil, sitting at the judges table, flirting with Mrs. America 2005 (more on that later). 

WE (Women's Entertainment) Network's attempts to add drama with reality TV elements totally worked.  It definitely kept it interesting - at one point, the 46 "non-winners" got to vote one of their own back into the winning group.  Hello!  Drama!  And it was even the hottie Phil was sad to see voted out, so turns out he has something in common with 46 married women.  Let's hope it is just his opinion.

Phil had his moment of fame, and was announced on air, here he is handing off the envelope (the guy in the black hair - the other guy is Mr. Peterman, Elaine Benis' Boss from Seinfeld).



And finally I think much of the element of competition, I came to realize, is about endurance.  These women had been together for 2 weeks, competing, bonding, learning dance steps, walking in heels and being on their best behavior - you know being NICE for 2 straight weeks, and the end of it all, they spent close to 5 hours on their feet, in clear heels, on a stage, in gowns and multiple changes of swim wear and we still expected them to be lovely, poised and able to answer a pretty tough interview question.  I was tired just watching, and we were just there for the last night.

Remarkably, in my judgment 5 of the 6 answered very well in light of the circumstances, and I think that the ability to answer questions (in heels in a gown on stage at 11 PM) about the universe is something we can all work on.  I tried asking Phil and Rudy (his accomplice in vote counting) a version of the questions and they could only grunt.  So here are the questions I will leave you with as a wrap up to part I and I encourage you to add a tough question a day to your personal "workout" that you force yourself to answer in a few sentences.  I think the ability to think on your feet is important. 

The questions:

What should Mrs. America see when she looks in the mirror?
What is something we would be surprised to know about you?
How would you define success?
What is your biggest fear?
How would you best describe yourself?
Who do you consider the best living role model and why?

I challenge you all to answer one of those questions in the Blog Comments.  Come on, its not like I am asking you to get onstage in a swimsuit and answer.  Give it a whirl.