Feminism in an unlikely place — a transgender beauty pageant
A little before noon last Sunday, I pulled up outside a nightclub in Hollywood.
I had come to check out rehearsals for a beauty pageant being staged that night at Circus Disco, a kitschy bar tucked back from the street on an unglamorous stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard.
The idea of ranking women on their looks had always seemed objectionable, like a step backward from feminism. But this pageant sounded special. The Queen USA contest is billed as "the premier transgender beauty pageant in the United States."
PHOTOS: Miss Queen USA
Past a portico topped with a statue of a dancing tiger, a side door led into a cavernous dance hall. A flock of women in workout clothes and heels were moving in formation. "Hips, hips, hips, hips!" a choreographer yelled. "I know it's lunch time, but I want to see some energy!"
As the routine took shape, a slim woman with long blond hair looked on approvingly. Karina Samala is the reigning "Empress" of the Imperial Court of Los Angeles and Hollywood, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group that puts on the pageant every year.
Samala was born a boy in the Philippines, but says she always felt like a girl inside. As a kid, she used to sneak into her sisters' dresses.
After immigrating to the United States in her 20s, she found a community of people like her at the drag clubs of West Hollywood, where she would do impersonations on stage (she was best as Cher).
"But I was trying to live a double life," she said. "I had to go to work in a suit and tie and at night I would go back to being Karina, performing in gay bars."
Samala began her medical transition to becoming a woman a decade ago, around the time she retired from her job as a senior engineer at Northrop Grumman.
She's now involved with half a dozen advocacy groups and advisory boards, including one that helped establish transgender-only cells in Los Angeles city jails earlier this year. She's trying to implement similar changes at Los Angeles County jails, and is also working with a nonprofit to create a free medical clinic to meet the specific health needs of transgender women.
When she's not shuttling between meetings, Samala is checking in with the dozens of young people around Los Angeles who call her a mentor, or simply "Mother Karina."
She pushes them to compete in pageants, which she says helps boost the confidence of a population that doesn't often get a lot of support.
Samala knows what winning a pageant can do for self-esteem. She is a former Queen Universe.
The pageant was about to begin. In the dressing room backstage, it felt like prom night.
Contestant Bramyla Wilson, looking glamorous with thick curls and a sparkly red prom dress, was still mulling which heels to wear.
"The silver ones?" Wilson asked.
"The silver ones," her friend, Kimora Belisle, agreed.
Wilson moved here from Alabama a few years ago. When I asked her how the transgender community in L.A. compares to the one back home, she looked at me like I was crazy. "There is no community in Alabama," she said.
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