House of Horror’s vanity contest

‘She really was almost grotesquely lovely… In fact, she was almost universally shunned’, writes David Foster Wallace in his Infinite Jest. The quote certainly holds some truth: overwhelming beauty can give rise to total exclusion, partially because no one can muster the courage to speak to the girl and partially because she is envied. So why would someone want everyone to know that they are the  ‘Prettiest Girl of All Time’ (as Wallace puts it)? Well, 500 quid will do it. Hell, I know people who would do more for less.

The House of Horror Charity Gala will briefly pause its ghoulish Halloween entertainment to crown the Snow Queen of the night. Yes. We will, in the spirit of every teen movie ever made, crown a Prom queen. Worse still, and conversely to a Prom, you have to nominate yourself for it; it is an award for vanity. But hold on just a minute. Where is the Snow King? Every other article in the paper is about a wretched middle-aged woman under the guise of a feminist whining over inequality. Well, where is our chance to win £500? We should be given the opportunity to participate in an amateur beauty pageant should we want to. Sexism is certainly a two-sided blade.

To be totally frank I feel sorry for the poor girl. £500 will certainly buy her a nice handbag but it will not avert the million staring eyes and chattering lips. Why are we doing this? Scholars have put forward a theory: the night’s sponsor, Snow Queen Vodka – and of course the gala’s supplier of the eponymous drink – has probably made this absurd demand, in search of a pretty face for their brand. Still, it doesn’t quite make sense. Chucking away £500 just to put a frozen tiara on a tipsy head does not fit in with the night’s agenda.

The case gets thicker still: the name ‘Snow Queen’ has ambiguous implications. In Slavic folklore the Snow Queen is the embodiment of the winter period: a seasonal antagonist and the embodiment of icy malice. I’m sure that is not the image our queen of queens wants to be putting across.

Call me a cynic but I don’t see a happy ending in sight. Aside from the fact that this showcase is bizarre, it is indirectly a character assassination.

Image courtesy of liqurious.notcot.org