RyanHarne.com

If you haven’t seen this video, either linked via an email forward or from another blog, in the last four days, you must have been in hiding - or at least not living in US America.

I have watched this clip dozens of times in the days since its continual YouTube rotation began and have consequently experienced every nuance of humor, shame, horror, mutual embarassment, and revulsion. Yet, only today, has it sunk in that this 48 second clip shows us possibly the most extreme example of stage fright combined with social ineptitude combined with involuntary self-sabotage. For 48 seconds, the neurons in one human brain all misaligned and fired without remorse, sending miniscule electric shocks to various bodily organs in order to function in the most unusual manner. Unfortunately, it happened to Miss Teen South Carolina 2007. Unfortunately, it was caught on tape. Unfortunately, the person who Tivo-ed it immediately posted it to YouTube.

If you analyze her verbiage, you are left wondering how she made it through Miss Teen South Carolina, or Miss Lexington SC, or even how she made it through high school. Such a “grammarless” response cannot be the common form of a state pageant winner. This is the work of extreme shock that pushed this young girl to the realm of psychosis.

Her body language in the last handful of seconds is awkward. She appears defensive. Weeks, months of training would otherwise have prepped her for an appropriate demeanor in these tense moments; what we see exhibited is the result of an unnatural breakdown. You can’t doubt her prior experience, nor her coaches, nor her own prayers that things would work in her favor. To get to Miss Teen USA, you can neither be entirely illiterate nor entirely incoherent. But some assembly required.

I mean, she did win third runner up (fourth place, it seems) in the end. So, we either have some spectacularly sympathetic judges or Lauren Caitlin Upton is smashing in a two-piece.

It’s worth a second watch, all the same.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 at 9:56 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.