By Kai Ma Photograph by Eric Sueyoshi
It’s a few minutes before Diane Yoo must appear in front of a panel of judges to display her national costume, and she’s nowhere to be found. The pageant staff is frantically running around, hissing at each other, “Where’s Diane? Where is she?” Suddenly Diane appears, gliding across the room like Korean royalty, the seven silk layers of her ethereal hanbok billowing under, then behind her. As she walks up the stairs to meet the judges, her wig falls apart. “Umma!” she yells, her voice piercing through the room. She runs down the stairs and disappears again. The judges move on to the next contestant.
[ad#336]
It’s not an ideal start for Diane, the 26-year-old contestant representing Korea for the 20th annual Miss Asia USA pageant, held in June at the Alex Theatre in Glendale, Calif. The pageant is not until the following night, but this event is equally critical: Ten judges are scoring all 31 contestants in the categories of national costume and personality interview. When the contestants convene for the official pageant, they will exhibit their national costumes again, along with their eveningwear and swimsuits, in front of a packed house.
The Miss Asia USA competition is directed by Virgelia Villegas, who describes her pageant as a modern-day charm school. “I’m very strict with the girls,” says Villegas. “I teach fine dining, posing, etiquette, public speaking, social skills, presentation. I train them the old-school way.” The contestants, also called delegates, represent 23 Asian countries ranging from China to Laos, and are between the ages of 17 and 28.
When Diane re-emerges, she walks in front of the judges, poised and elegant, despite her tardiness. She is dressed in a vibrant modernized hanbok, layered in waves of crimson, royal blue, yellow and pink. A straw headpiece is dramatically tilted over a braided wig. (“I wanted to look like a living doll,” Diane later told me.)
After she describes her costume to the judges, Diane saunters back downstairs to the women’s restroom, which she has transformed into her personal, makeshift dressing room. Inside is her make-up artist Taurus Jerome, and the counters are overrun with rouge, curling irons and brushes galore. “It’s all about making her red-carpet-ready,” Jerome says.
Diane must now prepare to meet with the judges again for a brief, timed interview, and starts by unpeeling the layers of her gown, one at a time. “This is what you call a traditional Korean strip show,” she says, before slipping her svelte 5-foot-9-inch figure into a black Marciano mini-dress. As she perches on the counter to have her make-up reapplied, clear and silver stilettos are dangling from her feet. But inside the bathroom, it’s her mother, Joyce Yoo, who reigns.
[ad#336]
“Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she says to Diane in Korean, switching to English to say, “Don’t be late again.” She hovers over Diane and Taurus, saying, “Make-up looks pretty but what about the hair? Do you have time? Ahhh … change clothes, hurry!”
Pageant moms, like soccer moms, will do anything to ensure that their children bring home the gold, and Diane’s mother isn’t the only one who vows to see her progeny crowned. At the theater, they are everywhere — pushy and overbearing matriarchs dousing their daughters in Aqua-Net, while shaking the wrinkles out of the hems of each dress. Joyce, a plump woman with a curly head of hair, rummages through her daughter’s enormous suitcases, and when she can’t find the suit that Diane must wear for her interview, they argue over where it is. Frustrated, her mother tells Diane, “I hate you!” But later during Diane’s interview, she is standing on the sidelines, her hands nervously clasped under her chin.
For her interview, Diane is now smoky-eyed, and dressed in a suit and string of pearls. She nails each question, addressing the judges by name while describing the sushi restaurants she will open in Houston next year.
Another judge asks her, “What is the true definition of beauty?”
“Confidence,” Diane answers.
Which is exactly what distinguishes Diane from the other contestants: her self-assurance and quiet boldness never discloses the frenetic energy in the bathroom downstairs. She never looks or sounds nervous. “Diane stands out,” says Tram Ho, a judge. “She’s focused and fabulous.”
While Diane answers questions, a staff person announces that her time is up. Diane keeps on talking, finishing her sentence without flinching.
It’s as if this abandonment of the rules works for her. She’s late for the judges; she talks past her time limit. Some may call it unprofessional, the actions of a diva. But for Diane, perhaps it’s more about finishing whatever it is she started.
“There’s a big difference between the winners and people who are just doing pageants for the experience,” Diane tells me, back in the bathroom. “Everything has to be balanced emotionally, physically, spiritually. When meeting with women that have won previous titles, you really see why they won. They are fierce.”
***
[ad#336]
I first met Diane at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, two weeks before the June 21 pageant. Diane, who lives in Katy, Texas, a town outside of Houston, flies into L.A. (on her own dime) every weekend to rehearse and participate in pageant-related events. Inside her hotel room, a make-up artist is about to meticulously glue false eyelashes to Diane’s lids. “I’m not wearing any make-up yet,” Diane says, apologetically.
Not that there’s a need for it. With or without bronzer, Diane is a beautiful woman with a button nose and the high, curved forehead of a model. When she speaks, her breathy purr carries a slight Southern drawl.
Inside her Louis Vuitton bag, Diane’s pink cell phone rings. It’s her coach, a beauty queen who has previously won Miss Texas, Miss USA and Miss Universe titles. “I talk to [my coach] five times a day,” says Diane. “She calls and texts me like no other.”
Yoo calls pageantry “an extreme sport” that requires intense discipline and focus. For this pageant, preparation began eight months ago. She has trained with more than 10 coaches and six make-up artists, goes to the gym twice a day, and is on a strict diet formulated by a personal trainer: a fiber-heavy breakfast, followed by a protein-oriented lunch and supper. In two months, she has lost 10 pounds. “But I am the worst cheater,” she admits. “This week, I’ve eaten a brownie every single day.”
The next day, I meet Diane at rehearsal in the auditorium of the Glendale Public Library. The room is filled with intense young girls pursuing their dreams, strutting on stage as a choreographer barks off orders. Though the beauty industry worships youth, in the pageant world, it seems as if it can work against you. Many of the Miss Asia USA delegates, some in their teens, appear girlish and inexperienced, like fawn wobbling in six-inch mules encrusted with gems.
“Every girl wants that crown so badly,” says Diane. “These are young girls, and they will break emotionally.”
After rehearsal, Diane and I have lunch at a Japanese restaurant, where she admits to almost breaking down herself. “I cracked a couple weeks ago,” she says. “The endless hours of training and traveling … it’s so insane. I couldn’t catch my breath, and I felt hollow. I even felt an intense pressure to quit. I was asking myself, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And there’s really no answer to that. But I realized that pageantry, for me, puts me out there. It forces me to keep going.”
Sitting in front of me, I realize that Diane is a bit of a chameleon. On stage, she looks the part of a glossy beauty queen with a frozen, artificial smile. But in person, as she admits to her near-breakdown, she looks vulnerable. Other times, she’s charming, spunky. When I ask her if she wants to order a cocktail, she says, “I love to drink, but I can’t right now,” then takes a sip of my cucumber martini anyway. “Cucumber is good for the skin,” she adds, winking.
Like any young, gorgeous starlet dreaming to emerge from suburban obscurity, Diane, breathy voice and all, hopes to break into Hollywood. If she wins the pageant, she will move to L.A. to pursue the entertainment industry, her hopes set on starring in a film or becoming an on-air host or personality. “This is my ticket out,” she says. “Pageantry is also known as a fast track into whatever it is you want to do. If you win a title, your life is set.”
Diane lives with her parents in Katy, and works in a management department at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. When she was in the sixth grade, her father, Jason Yoo, an immigrant hailing from Jeju-do, South Korea, put Diane in modeling school. But Diane, who was a tomboy, wasn’t a fan. “I thought it was retarded,” she recalls, laughing. “We had to bring in this heavy make-up toolbox and learn how to pluck our eyebrows.”
As the only daughter of three, Diane was more interested in tearing up her knees and elbows playing football and basketball. “I’ve done it all, honey,” she says. “I got into fights, got into trouble.” She was suspended in high school after driving her father’s car to campus. “My dad had a gun and prescription pills in the car, and that day the dogs were sniffing the cars in the parking lot. I got a slip from the principal, then I got suspended because they thought I was taking drugs and shooting things. And I was like, ‘No, it’s my dad’s car!’”
Perhaps because she grew up in Texas, a state with a long, proud tradition as a pageant powerhouse, Diane still managed to stumble into her first pageant when she was 18. For the talent portion of Miss American Teen, she played the violin but while on stage, she blanked out. “I was just standing there with my violin, smiling like an idiot.”
She returned to modeling, which took off after she moved to Waco to attend Baylor University, where she studied sociology. “I don’t know how I started out as a model in Waco of all places, but the industry is like a black hole and I kept getting pulled in. Agents would stalk me as I walked around Wal-Mart.”
After she graduated, she entered the Miss Korea Texas pageant, and was crowned the 2006 queen. This allowed her to compete for Miss Korea Universe, and she lived with other contestants for more than a month in Korea, six girls to a room. “There was gossip everywhere, so much drama,” recalls Diane. “But it taught me how to be very competitive. It pushed me out on the edge.” Though she didn’t win, at that point, she was “bitten by the pageant bug.”
But the Miss Asia USA competition, which is Diane’s fourth pageant, will be her last. “I’m getting old,” says Diane. “This industry peaks at a young age, and you won’t see me at those pageants for older, married women. No way.”
The reputation of pageantry in general has long been a sour one, evoking images of the vacuous, waving Barbie doll in blue eye shadow and a gaudy dress. As a previous titleholder, the most common stereotype Diane gets is that she’s beautiful but dense. “That’s the image I challenge passionately,” she says. “I want to see pageantry updated. The [Miss Asia USA pageant] doesn’t have a talent portion, which I applaud because when a girl wins and represents Miss Asia, and she goes out to an event or a gala, she’s not going to go out there and yodel. She’s going to socially interact and network like crazy for her organization. We’re not opera singers. We’re savvy businesswomen and entrepreneurs. We own non-profits. That’s the platform we should be standing on.
“I don’t really love pageantry but I love the opportunities that it brings,” she adds. “Beauty is universally accepted and is a powerful way to bridge communities. We can really use this to even bring war-torn countries together.”
***
[ad#336]
The weeks leading up to the beauty pageant contain all the elements for a reality TV hit: stress, expensive clothes, and dozens of girls competing for the coveted crown. On the night of the pageant, the basement of the Alex Theatre is a zoo, each dressing room packed with agitated, half-naked women with rollers in their hair.
When the pageant kicks off, all 31 contestants appear on stage for a choreographed dance in matching Scala eveningwear.
In the auditorium, the judges sit in the front row, and the audience is filled with a mixture of 1,400 family members, screaming friends and gawking men. Contestants introduce themselves in their national costumes, and the stage is now filled with spectacular fabrics, colors, ribbons and bangles: Armenia’s gold-threaded maroon velvet dress, Myanmar’s white feather wings, Japan’s kimono dripping with sparkling floral prints. When Diane appears in her national costume, she is holding two magenta fans, which she unfolds in theatrical fashion. Her dramatic presence inspires different reactions: Some audience members laugh at her, while others groan, “Oh my God, she’s so hot…” The winner for the national costume competition, scored the previous day, is announced. It’s Diane.
Afterwards, the delegates appear in identical bikinis, sashaying slowly across the stage, twirling, then standing in rows at the back of the stage. The last category is eveningwear. When Diane enters, she is in a strapless gown with a sequined turquoise corset and a skirt of feathers that makes her look like a peacock. She turns around, and a detachable train features a mural of mountains, lotus, a tiger and setting sun.
The women are all judged for their appearance, and how they carry their frocks. As the presenters announce the top five contestants, the women stare at the audience, beaming. Diane is smiling serenely, her eyes so widened by false eyelashes and shimmering make-up, that she looks not unlike a deer in headlights. Along with the Philippines, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam, Diane is selected as a top contestant. The remaining five are then asked to answer the question: “If your culture [forbade] you from participating in beauty pageants, would you participate anyway?” Diane is the first to respond.
“I would feel disheartened if I did not represent my culture to the fullest,” she answers.
Each contestant answers the question, some sounding eloquent yet rehearsed. The answers always ignite roars of applause, catcalls and cheers. Then the sashes and crowns come out. One by one, the runner-ups are announced, until Diane is standing next to one other delegate, Brittany Chen of Taiwan.
The crowd makes their voice heard. “Brittany!” “Diane!” “Taiwan!” “Korea!” Others yell out names that have long been eliminated. “China!” “Linda!” “Jordan!!!”
The first runner-up is announced – Brittany. Diane is then crowned Miss Asia USA, and for the first time on stage, her frozen grin melts into something more genuine: a sigh of relief. The audience is noticeably divided – some clapping and whistling, while other parts of the room remain silent, looking surprised.
Diane is now surrounded by presenters and judges. An overflowing bouquet of roses is pressed into her arms by a member of the United States Air Force. A silk sash is draped over her chest by the now-former Miss Asia USA. Diane looks ecstatic, surprised, slightly overwhelmed, but she never cracks or cries, even as a jewel-adorned crown is placed over her flawless head.
“I couldn’t believe it,” says Diane, after the pageant. “I really thought the first runner up was going to win. After I answered my question, my heart immediately sank when I heard all the other girls’ responses. I didn’t think I had a bad answer, but I realized I could’ve been more forceful.”
But when the queen was announced, “everything inside me just dropped,” she says. “Then I went numb. And then I told myself, ‘Act surprised!’”
As the winner, Diane will receive a $16,000 scholarship to James Albert School of Cosmetology, cash prizes, and become an “ambassador of culture and goodwill,” a Miss Asia USA-affiliated role that entails reaching out to various Asian communities to make special appearances, and assist in cultural and fundraising events.
“Diane is an icon now,” says Villegas, the pageant director (and also a judge). “What’s important is your passion. If you believe in the title, you will become a successful queen, understood? Diane is now the queen of all the Asian communities.”
“The judges are so gracious to choose me,” adds Diane. “What I hoped to portray was my heart and compassion. Now, I’m ready to hit the ground running.”
And just like that, Diane flocks off to the groups of judges, reporters and groupies at the VIP party next door to the theater. Her turquoise bodice is glistening, and her tiara is intact. As she meanders through the room, she greets each guest with a nod and a smile, but this time, as a queen.
