Miss Congeniality?

Here is the funny story of the week (that has been the ongoing joke all week as well.) On Monday while at lunch, Khruu Ooy said that she wanted me to be in a beauty pageant for the Loy Krathong festival that is coming up. Amm (our communication liaison i.e. translator) explained what Ooy had said. They explained a little bit and we all laughed thinking it was pretty funny. It wasn't until a couple of minutes later that I discovered that they were not joking one bit. I believe it is ironic how the Thai idea of beauty is so different than the American idea. We came up with a slogan: blonde, blue, height, white. They were banking on the fact that my super white skin would win the contest. The "bank" was a major draw for the contest; winners received a lot of money. After trying to tell them I thought a beauty pageant sounded like cruel and unusual punishment Ooy informed me that I had two days to decide. For the next few days my roommates and I discussed the crazy idea. We decided that one of us should do it, but none of us wanted to be that one. After many jokes and some not so brilliant ideas (one involving taking pictures in a lime green dress with our landlord's extremely unique lime green "sports" car and another being the idea that I wear a traditional Mexican outfit (instead of traditional Thai dress) since I'm from New Mexico. Therefore, I would be an American wearing a Mexican outfit in a Thai beauty pageant) we decided that this year we would go watch the pageant if it looked benign we would consider doing it next year. Actually, we are hoping that everyone forgets about it by next year so we do not have to come up with another way to politely decline.