Free Cybill Disobedience by Cybill Shepherd

contest in Dallas by their mothers. On one side of us was Miss Indianapolis, on the other Miss Spokane. Every time we left the hotel we were chauffeured in a cavalcade of turquoise blue Comets, escorted by cadets from Texas A&M to entertainments such as a Turtle Derby. (Each contestant got to keep her turtle and a supply of Gourmet Turtle Food.) My scrapbook from that week includes a recipe card for avocadop and a coupon for dinner, noting in my scratchy penmanship: Had to have meal ticket or couldn’t eat-always an important concern to me. The judges were introduced peremptorily at a cocktail party that featured a tomato aspic in the shape of an armadillo. I was thrilled to meet Dick Clark, but on a more practical level I was interested in the director of the American Airlines Stewardess College, something I’d always considered a viable career option, a last resort to get out of Memphis.
    When the finalists were announced, I was not one of them. Instead I was named Miss Congeniality, one of the honorary but dubious consolation prizes that included Miss Personality and Miss Sportsmanship. Lying to a reporter from the Memphis Press - Scimitar who called for an interview, I gushed, “This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me. All the contestants are best friends already. Last night we had a slumber party, and tonight we’re dancing at a go-go place, but no boys are allowed. It’s a good thing the frug came along since the girls have to dance by themselves.” Failing to make the cut as a finalist was devastating, reinforcing my lifelong anxiety about falling short of perfection. Sad and miserable, I had to swallow my disappointment and participate in the remaining festivities, rehearsing a group song about the spectrum of national contestants (“They’re beautifying Baltimore and out in Santa Rosa, in Louisville and Buffalo and on the Ponderosa”). The winner was an “at-large” candidate from Milpitas, California, whose talent was an “authentic” hula dance performed to a Don Ho record.
    Even though I returned to Memphis in defeat, something was changed and would never again be the same: I was famous, publicly acknowledged as beautiful and rewarded for it, different and set apart. I’d imagine a friend’s voice getting a little crispy and impatient, disallowing me any complaint about fatigue or boredom or a bad hair day. The president of the pageant did offer me a summer job at the shows he produced for Six Flags over Texas--my first professional offer--but my parents wouldn’t let me live away from home by myself. I was still somewhat useful to pageant officials, who asked me to appear at a party for the next year’s Miss Teenage hopefuls. “Actually,” said the letter from the director of public relations, “all we want you to do is smile prettily when you are introduced and mingle with the girls, convincing them to enter the contest.” Smiling prettily seemed to be my talent.
    EVERY CHILD IN MEMPHIS GREW UP UNDERSTANDING that it was the cotton capital of the world, that the crop had dominated the economy, even the society of the city since before the Civil War, when a major slave market provided the necessary labor of industry, and cotton brokers dotted the waterfront, transacting business at a cotton exchange that rivaled Wall Street. King Cotton still occasioned the biggest social event of the year, the Cotton Carnival. From the time I was a little girl, I stood with the crowd awaiting the Carnival king and queen, who were chosen from the wealthiest and most prominent families in town. They arrived on a flower-bedecked barge, blindingly lit and dressed in shiny rhinestoned costumes, at the historic downtown steamboat landing, lined with cobblestones that were said to have been brought to North America as ballast on Spanish galleons and towed upriver by mules. The local country clubs named royal princesses to the king and queen’s court, and Chickasaw’s board of directors appointed me