No: 6 Alternative Miss Ireland 1987 To 2012 | Pocketmags.com

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No: 6 Alternative Miss Ireland 1987 To 2012

A long time ago at midnight on April 1, in a dance club on Dublin’s Dame Lane…

Muriel Walls, Brian Sheehan

You are at the bottom of a narrow and shaky spiral staircase in what had been promised to be a “dressing room”, but instead turned out to be a space roughly the size of a handkerchief that not only has to accommodate you and your three changes of costume for Daywear, Swimwear and Eveningwear – but also the same trio of changes for the flailing, preening bodies of nine other contestants. All of you are soon to be propelled, one by one, up the staircase and directly onto the stage, which is more a vertiginous ramp, thrusting at an angle across the dance floor. The only thing separating you now from the hoards of punters is a thin curtain, a film of smoke and some free booze. Realising it was all a bit late for character, you have thrown yourself into costume – you have always relished drag as travesty, dressing-up and making-up as an act of transgression and political statement.

Already the evening is somewhat a blur – you have managed somehow to survive Daywear. And Swimwear had been relatively easy – inevitable nudity, apart from a codpiece fashioned from a rubber goldfish carved with a hole just big enough to squeeze all of your genitals into. But now, Eveningwear is upon you and you wait your turn in a costume so lovingly crafted around your chosen name. But then one of the other contestants has decided to literally explode for her finale by pouring a few gallons of fluorescent poster paint over her head and body, followed by a liberal dousing of flour. All this in the tiny space under the stairs has resulted in everyone else looking like her entourage. And as her slippery toxic form steals the crown, your only tear shed as you dance the night away is on the realisation that your Biba spider eyelashes have been crushed in the melee. Next time, you say to yourself as you stagger home that morning along the cobbles of inner city Dublin, frock in tatters, heels in hand, make-up dissolved –but feeling mighty. Next time, I will be that Alternative Miss Ireland.

It’s hard to believe, looking back, that the first Alternative Miss Ireland took place over 30 years ago, at a time before the Celtic Tiger had shown even so much as a stripe, when homosexuality was still a criminal offence and when beauty, youth and initiative seemed to mostly migrate from the Irish shores. Who would have thought that what we started all that time ago would become the spectacular event that returned annually, not only to amuse and celebrate, but also to remind us — many of whom are now firmly embedded in the mainstream — that there is life aplenty out upon the margins. Our Miss hung up her crown in 2012, and will be forever missed. Yet her balls are what we reach for in any time of crisis.

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