It's easy to be skeptical about "beauty" pageants' intrinsic value. Sure, there are the talent competitions and topical questions posed to finalists, but there are also evening gown and swimsuit events.
Mrs. America Leslie Ann Lam
ends her reign grateful
for her experiencesBy Tim Ryan
tryan@starbulletin.comMany if not most of the young women entering pageants publicly may declare they're in it for the scholarship or "promoting world peace," but there seems to be a lot of plastic surgery and augmentation in those perfect bodies.
Leslie Ann Lam, the current Mrs. America -- the first time a Mrs. Hawaii has won the national crown -- and a Hauula resident with her husband of 16 years, Mervyn, and two teenage children, believes entering a pageant is a personal choice, not an ethical one. Lam, 36, will end her reign this week, relinquishing her title Friday night at the Mrs. America Pageant 2001.
"They let me keep the crown and the sash," the statuesque Lam says during an interview at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. "It's time for me to spend more time with my family and my dogs and get my hands dirty in the garden."
Lam, a part-time reading teacher at Hauula Elementary School, is far more comfortable talking about what's important in her life -- family and friends and gardening and baking -- than about pageants, although she credits the pageant for giving her more confidence and keeping her focused on what's important in her life. She also enjoyed traveling and meeting prominent politicians, entertainers and business people and seeing sights she never imagined she would visit.
"I had never been much of a traveler before this," she said.
Make no mistake, Lam is gorgeous, with a piercing gaze, high cheek bones, picture-perfect smile and a melodic voice. But why would any happily married woman enter a beauty pageant?"Two years ago my sister, Cheri Leong, wanted to enter," Lam says. "She got sponsorship money, everything she needed."
Unknown to anyone, even the 32-year-old Leong, was that she had "a terrible heart problem." It turned out that all the women in Lam's family suffered from the life-threatening hereditary ailment, called syncope, that leads to an abnormal heart beat and fainting spells.
"Of course she couldn't enter the pageant because of the stress and all," Lam said.
A year later, pageant officials approached her again but she declined, suggesting instead that Leslie Ann take her place. During the year of her sister's recovery Lam "also got healthy" losing 35 pounds.
"I entered to get some life experience and maybe to show my kids that even a 35-year-old mom can do about anything," she said. "That was it; no plans beyond it.
"My family always told me I was lucky to have been born with good looks, but what is really important is how you develop the rest inside. Everybody enters pageants on their own terms."
Lam never expected to win, "always envisioning the crown on every other delegate's head."
She said one of the joys of the pageant was being around people "so confident in what they do.
"Some are assured about their physical selves, some use the pageant as a forum to promote their strong personal beliefs," she said. "Everyone has the individual choice to pose in a swimsuit that may be a bit risqué. We all have the right to use our God-given talents.
"No one forces a person to watch the pageant on TV; you can turn the channel," Lam said.
Plastic surgery for competitors also is an individual choice, not necessarily an ethical one, she said.
"Maybe some contestants need it for sound reasons. I know of at least one woman in this pageant who had a mastectomy and needed augmentation.
"If it makes people feel good about themselves or even improves their relationship with their husband and it hurts no one else, then why not? How do you differentiate between what can be done and what needs to be done?"
As Mrs. America, Lam traveled about seven days a month, most of the time being treated like "royalty," something she began to expect, she said.
"Whenever I started to feel, well, ungrounded, a bit self-important, something always funny happened to me."
Two hours before a speech to 2,000 people prior to George W. Bush's inauguration in Washington, D.C., Lam bit into a jelly bean that dislodged a tooth cap.
"Here I am, in a city where I don't know a dentist and on such a big night there was no way to find a dentist," she said. "I was feeling very sorry for myself."
Then husband Mervyn, who manages the Kaneohe Safeway store, suggested using a denture paste to put the cap back in place.
"It worked, and I went from tears to hysterical laughing," she said.
In Japan, Mrs. America found herself alone in the rain without her guide, husband, or an umbrella.
"I was used to people helping me everywhere I went, so I thought this is awful that I have to carry my own things; and I have no umbrella and it's raining," she said. "So when I stepped out of the bus I fell. My lei broke and I was soaked. When I saw my reflection in a window I just started laughing.
"I said out loud, 'OK God, you got me.'"
Relinquishing the Mrs. America title and the perks that go with it don't sadden Lam.
"There's a reason for everything in life, and this was my time to do this," she said. "Now I continue the journey with my family; my reason for being."
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