Jeff Gray remembers the first time he broke a nail. It was a pretty one, too—nicely painted, perfectly pointed. But that wasn’t half as upsetting as arriving late at the “womanless” beauty pageant and finding he’d been locked out of the school auditorium.
“Yes, ma’am, can I help you?” the principal asked him.
Jeff, a member of the Chinquapin Fire and Rescue Squad and a fabric inspector at a textile mill, answered in a deep voice that didn’t match his lavender dress and pumps, “Yes, SIR, you may.”
Sorry, Jeff. Didn’t recognize you in your heels.
It’s possibly the most un-PC activity around, these fire and rescue department fund-raisers that have men dressing as women. But the tradition is as rich as the soil around the turkey houses in rural Duplin County.
And where else will you find a school principal dressed in a tutu and performing a hairy-chested rendition of Swan Lake?
What motivates these Regular Guys, these farmers, law enforcement officers, teachers, and textile workers, to ask their wives for help with mascara and argue amongst themselves about the relative merits of balloons and Nerf footballs for a better bosom?
“Definitely the Nerf football,” said Jeff, drawing on a cigarette while dispassionately watching a videotape of a womanless beauty pageant held a couple of weeks earlier. “You see, you just cut it in half and…”
Yes, yes, Jeff. We get the idea.
Steve Brinkley, a rotund insurance salesman, put on ladies’ clothing for a practical reason. He and rescue squad captain Pam Hatcher reached an agreement: He’d be in the pageant if she’d see that he got to pitch his Woodmen of the World insurance to squad members.
Like most pageant participants, Steve’s got a videotape of the evening.
“I got two dresses, but neither one was big enough,” said Steve, fast-forwarding to where he struts out to “My Girl.” “So I had to borrow one from the fire chief’s wife. It fit good.”
He searched high and low for his heels, finally wedging his wide feet into a pair of 12’s. He borrowed a tall, platinum-blond wig from a friend for his talent performance, singing “9 to 5.” His chest was enhanced by stuffing his sister’s bra with “old washrags.”
“I may do the pageant next year,” said Steve. “I kinda enjoyed it.”
Except for the pantyhose.
“I hated them,” he said. “And it’s hard to find those Queen 2X’s, you know?”
Jeff doesn’t mind the hose. But he winces at the memory of that torn fake fingernail, stuck on with Krazy Glue by “my wife at the time.”
Pam, a squad member for 17 years, grew up in the “womanless” tradition. This year, the department raised $1,500. Last year, the members made $2,800 because they auctioned off a cake shaped like an ambulance, too.
Besides prancing around in evening gowns, the men must perform a talent, which can range from rambling joke-telling to saxophone playing.
“Last year’s winner practiced his saxophone behind his chicken houses the whole afternoon before the pageant,” said Pam.
Recruiting the men isn’t difficult.
“But one of the guy’s wives did say she hoped we didn’t do it next year ’cause she thinks he’s enjoying dressing up a little too much.”
Jeff said getting up on that stage dressed like a woman and dancing to numbers like “Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On” isn’t easy.
Nor was it easy when the gospel singers hired to perform at intermission announced they wouldn’t do it because they didn’t want to give the appearance of endorsing homosexual activity.
Ridiculous, huffed Pam.
Some people, said Jeff.
“Let’s face it: You have to be very sure of your masculinity to get up there and do that,” Jeff said. “And it’s a lot of work. When I couldn’t find a dress I liked, I hand-painted an outfit with big flowers and it looked great.”
Pam, listening to all this, looks at Jeff through a curl of cigarette smoke, her eyes narrowing.
“Jeff. Just promise me one thing. Just don’t you ever wear that tacky forest-green evening gown you wore that one time, okay?”
“Okay.”