I’m A Beauty Queen I Don’t Do This Shiz

**I was going to write something about playing with people and morality and some sort of angry post for producers toying with children. (Now is this how we raise our children? Well that’s how they do it, and we wonder why some people are “bad.”) Ten minutes into the show, I changed my mind.  Emotional wounds are deeper, heal a lot longer, and leave scars that instantaneously demand a certain emotion. That is if you have watched this new show Kid Nation, a show where kids run a “nation” (in quotes because it’s a town). I think the next (insert name of real villain) will sprout from that show. Somewhere in future time, 13 after the next Pacquiao wins and there is a calamity, I will know that one of them or they caused it (the calamity). When I’m in need of another person to push my wheelchair or to eat, the next bomb explosion I’d yell, “That’s the kid from Kid Nation! I used to watch him/her/him-her as a council.” Whoever thought that watching kids really just – I can’t think of a better term – bitch about things be oh so gloriously fun? Jerry Buckheimer, I smell bankruptcy so act quick, bitch back.  The biggest bitch fight I had when I was younger (grade school) was with a friend who not only refused to use deodorant but insisted on fanning her, uh, sign of adolescence to us. If you’re wondering, yes, we talked about it with her – she was a friend – but she dismissed our allegations, saying that none of us had hormones yet. We tried. We stinking failed. And for kids who were O.C. we knew that awful smells, at least those that were consensually rendered awful, was a no-no. Obviously the smell was not imaginary as I was not alone – perhaps we did not have hormones yet, but she clearly had sweat glands already activated. I used “we” because one of my more bitchy friends got so pissed off she actually went the extra mile and gave her a big stick of underarm freshener as part of our regular Christmas monito monita. My (more bitchy) friend was mean, but the smell was meaner, well, to our nostrils. My anguish peaked when days before the UN Celebration Day celebration while designing our room and practicing so that our class would win, she just (without warning or alarm) positioned herself in front of the only electric fan we had that time and imitated a gliding bird – with her arms gliding in the wind, her underarms popping like newly shaken wine bottles, and her underarms’ smell blasting like missile jets to our direction. There was no escape, and that added five more years of psychological therapy: I am jealous of people who discover the audacity of un-tawas-ed underarm through body parts they can label their own, and I am angry that the first putok my nose sniffed is not mine. We endured her (smell) the whole day and won, but pyrrich it definitely was. We lost something that could never be compensated back. Personally, I became a non-virgin sniffer – we all did. It was then that I decided that I would never want to be an adolescent more so, a grown-up – they stink. But oh well, I grew up anyway.   Having grown up through reality shows, Kid Nation is really nothing new. It is survivor less the adults. This is what I think makes the show really, really worthy of wasting my time. You see, the world and, and in, all its worldliness is apparently best served in the eyes of young children. Because of the honesty that children (supposedly and really) possess, the show is much juicier than the reason for any dying tiki torch in the middle of a supposedly dangerous island. When they say, unadulterated they meant it. Unlike survivor that slightly pangs its viewer’s attention to the fact that other people at some part of the world are suffering (for a million dollars), Kid Nation simply pegs on the fact that we all wonder what the world will be if it was ran by kids. And surprisingly, the world is not different. It is much more honest, yes, but at that honesty it is more brutal. Have I told you that I was going to enjoy this juicy show?   My baptismal into this child-y world is like that of a matinee idol video – with another matinee idol practicing “anal activities for their artistic growth” – and then denying it the day after it becomes available in Quiapo and Bluetooth. It had more than everything that I could wish for in a show: everything down to irritating “good” characters, which reality shows often lack nowadays. From psychological implications down to in-your-face qualms, the show covered it and left me salivating to see if one day they’d join the league of Hector Cannibal. Oh yum! Speaking of feeding, allow me to share the highlight of that blessed episode. The children in the show had to feed themselves and they needed protein. They have been feeding on anything starch the past few days and they rendered that they will not go through this reality show by starchiness alone. And so, in one of those town meetings that they had they asked the townspeople if they were into flesh by letting go of their town pets – this time it was the chickens. It was shocking but delightful for me to see that only two or three rejected the idea, one eventually backed out from rejecting the notion and decided that Chicken Little is nicer deep-fried. “Just so you know, I will leave if you kill those chickens…” said the future PETA leader in pink girl that did not raise her hand – she’d rather grow potatoes in her skin I guess. A commercial and a few frames later she with her constituents were running to the chicken den taking straps of leather from the horse station and ropes inside. They were staging an Oakwood, I loved it!   However, PETA leader girl (which due to her long name, we will refer to as PETA LG hence this sentence) was an Oakwood herself. She failed. At a town meeting, her ideologies of chicken-are-friends had to chicken out. Do you know what that means? It means that this bunch of kids who have yet to think of worldly pleasures and worldly crimes (i.e. sex, violence, et. Al.) will behead living creatures themselves, and did so. I can’t even look and there they were happy that the headless chicken still had Impulses (“It’s normal.”). I told you psychological implications were at stake, and what better age to impose psychological foundations to people than their growing years? Oh yes, the show is so juicy I think I had a heart attack! Yes, they beheaded two chickens and de-featered them, and cooked them ala corn on the cob. They guiltlessly ate that night. PETA LG’s constituents, like most Filipino politicians, changed sides at the smell of something with great benefits, this time being protein. See, they even have dirty politics! PETA LG did not leave her quarter that night. “They are sick.” said PETA LG probably feeling betrayed. I thought, you should wait when they start smelling each other’s adolescence, with what they’re willing to do, tell me that yes, they are sick. And just when they reached the esteem of treachery only Survivor can muster, they go on a competition.  Later in the show, they had a competition where, more than the fact of losing, was the fact that the kids were made to salivate over this great Slide to be put in the center of town and a surprise supposing everyone finishes. Yes, anyone can argue that it is more of a Reward Approach to the kids, but let’s see: when you factor in the fact that the first team can choose for a price but also need all the groups to accomplish the task before they can choose, can it still be called motivation? I say no, it is more appropriately, even correctly, called peer pressure. Peer pressured nine- to fifteen-year-olds, to be precise. Thinking farther ahead, when those kids have pulled the hairs of other co-townsfolk, can you still see the acceptance from other groups when one of them is not able to finish? What if one group constantly cost the town to not get the prize? I have only seen an episode and I am imagining episodes already, this is beyond satisfaction.  As part of the show, a council meeting is held near the end where the town is asked if they are satisfied with the performance of the council, four elected, supposed leaders. They were, except for the yellow team and its respective leader, who had someone from their own team ashamed to be yellow. So the ploy thickens, and I enjoy it more. The yellow team leader (YTL) tries to excuse her uselessness, “We try our best to get up and cook, it’s not easy cooking for forty heads.” I smell a liar/con artist/useless group leader in the making, as earlier she was shown just lip gloss-ing after dismissing her groupmate who asked them to simply do their assigned job (yes, while the others worked). “Whatever” she shooed the boy away. Then one boy from the townsfolk goes, “Look we’re all kids here okay, so don’t use that ‘we’re young’ excuse of yours. If we are to be town, you should work too.” The town mumbles. The council, especially YTL tries to quiet down the people (“Quiet!”). I could see the steam coming from her ears and nose, taking out a gun and going Kill Bill, “Whose useless now, you piece of soil fertilizer?” Oh, joy! At that time I just could not believe that it was near the ending. Step aside America’s Next Top Model, these kids will show un-acceptance and they will not even summon Anorexia or Over-weighted-ness. They will simply run the town.   The show features a forty day series. They were already on their seventh. And may I ask why? Why did it take too long for them to think of this formula? More especially, why does it have to end after forty days? They should at least wait until they are in need of armpit Lysols. You see these are children willing to massacre a chicken and revel at the flesh, who are born politicians, and children who dare stage mutiny at the spark of a new idea, would it not be nice to see them grow up, still, with each other? I might change my mind some day, but for now I am picturing them tawas-ing a fellow townsfolk that refuses to slap some on. Now that will define bitch fight.   PETA LG later enjoyed herself. With all her acts and schemes, you’d think that she’d grace out of town while doing the finger to them chicken-eaters. But no she stayed, “I think I’m gonna stay.” I officially loved her since. You see, she is a rather rare kind of person. She is an activist anti, the type you see rallying for one specific cause then heading straight to the exact, actual enemy without being noticed. She is everyone’s friend, and she will sniper them because she knows their home addresses and safe houses. I even think she ate one chicken by herself, raw and whole. Someone show me the 1-800 number.