THE contestants in a "healthy baby contest" are usually cute. The contestants in a beauty pageant are almost always svelte and stunning. But the contestants in the annual Hawaii's Junior Miss program are the epitome of the dynamic teen-aged girl empowered by big dreams and the aloha spirit, not to mention being intelligent, talented, physically fit, poised and opinionated to boot. The beauty of Junior
Miss is in its idealsFrankly, they're the daughters, nieces or neighbors you'd love to have -- so you could brag like crazy about their accomplishments. On a more big-picture note, they're the kind of young people that Hawaii desperately needs to assure itself a promising generation of future female leaders.
How lucky I was to learn all of this first-hand last month, while serving as a judge for the 40th anniversary Hawaii's Junior Miss Scholarship Program at the Kamehameha Schools auditorium.
Vying for thousands of dollars in college money were 23 high school senior girls from public and private schools on Oahu, Kauai and Maui. They were all bright enough to pass the high scholastic standards required of entrants, all outgoing enough to perform on stage, all brave enough to be interviewed by a panel that included a lofty Circuit Court judge, the only female general manager of a five-diamond Hawaii hotel and an especially cynical editorial page editor.
Yet they won me over because, when you're only 17, you're not supposed to reach such heights of greatness! But they easily did.
First, they dressed in business attire and attended individual interview sessions, in which they were quizzed on current events, social issues and controversies of the day. Meanwhile, their SAT scores and grades were being scrutinized by a separate panel of education experts.
Then on Jan. 23 and 24, each young lady took the spotlight to showcase a talent, donned baggy athletic clothes to exercise in an vigorous aerobic dance number, made short speeches and answered extemporaneously some of the most difficult and thought-provoking questions imaginable. Everybody sparkled:
And when Jolene Muneno of Iolani was announced as Hawaii's 1999 Junior Miss, the supportive delirium expressed by her fellow contestants was only superseded by the pride in the audience -- for the winner, for every other girl on that stage, for the job each parent did in raising what must have been a beautiful baby into a literate, liberated young gal.Lauren M.S. Akitake of Baldwin High School on Maui.
Junior Miss
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
DianeChang@aol.com, or by fax at 523-7863.