"Maybe girls need an island to find themselves. Maybe they need a place where no one's watching them so they can be who they really are."
—Mary Lou Novak
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is a story brought to you by The Corporation.
A plane of Beauty Contest contestants crash-lands on an uncharted island, where only a dozen women out of 50 survive. Along the way, they meet a bunch of guys pretending to be pirates (on a TV show brought to you by The Corporation), go insane and learn to survive. A Satire of the media and consumerism.
Beauty Queens provides examples of:
- Abusive Parents: Tiara's backstory. She says she can't remember the last time she felt full because her parents basically starved her and guilt-tripped her into preforming and preparing for pageants non-stop since she was two weeks old. Even her name "Tiara Destiny" fits into this.
- Acme Products: The Corporation makes everything from period products to breast surgeries to tv shows. Every product in this world is part of The Corporation somehow.
- Ax-Crazy:
- Taylor becomes this after eating too many berries. Or that's what the girls think. Agent Jones drugged her and made it look like she did it to herself.
- MoMo B. ChaCha is his own brand of Ax-Crazy as well, sentencing people to death at the slightest provocation.
- Black and Nerdy: Nicole is very smart and wants to be a doctor. However, unlike most examples of this trope, Beauty Queens explicitly discusses race.
- Black Dude Dies First: Lampshaded by Nicole and Shanti as they begin to drown in quicksand, claiming that of course the two girls of color will be the ones to die. Subverted in that nobody actually dies.
- Brainless Beauty: Miss Alabama and Miss Mississippi. However, in Tiara's case, it is discussed — she knows she's not very smart and so relies on being pretty, even though it makes her feel terrible about herself and she's always terrified that "there would be a test that didn't involve getting an A in pretty" and that she will let people down. That being said, she does have some good ideas, like how to collect water, and she graduates college with a GPA of 3.75 in the epilogue.
- Bound and Gagged: Agent Harris is bound with duct tape and gagged with a maxi pad.
- Boy Band: Boyz Will Be Boyz. JT Woodland aka Petra is the cute one.
- But Liquor Is Quicker: Duff seduces Adina while she's drunk.
- But Not Too Black: Discussed. Nicole is very dark-skinned and her backstory discusses colourism in detail.
- Caligula's Horse: MoMo B. ChaCha is so paranoid that his adviser is a taxidermied lemur named General Good Times.
- Cast Speciation: Tiara and Brittani are both The Ditz and start out basically interchangeable. Tiara then undergoes Character Development and, while still stupid, shows her Hidden Depths throughout the story.
- Commonality Connection: Shanti and Nicole start out by fighting over who gets to be the Token Minority, but eventually they bond over it and become best friends.
- Creepy Doll: The Ladybird Hope doll is described as soul-sucking. Tiara also believes that her childhood stuffed dinosaur was alive and evil.
- Cut Himself Shaving: When asked what happened to the winner and the first runner up for Miss Michigan, Jennifer cracks her knuckles and says they fell. Subverted in that the actual reasons the original contestants couldn't compete are completely innocent.
- Dance Party Ending: The epilogue has all the character that got off the island having a dance party.
- Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: Agent Harris tells the girls the Corporation's plot to kill them, then says, "Wait. I just said that out loud, didn't I? Damn."
- Divine Intervention: In the beginning of the book, a fundamentalist girl starts singing that Jesus is their copilot in hopes that this will occur. Near the end, Shanti and Nicole are rescued by a wind they surmise must have come from the gods of the island's relocated indigenous people.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: It takes a lot of strife, danger, and borderline mental breakdowns, but the girls finally learn to be themselves.
- Elvis Impersonator: MoMo B. ChaCha dresses up as Elvis to fuel his hypocritical obsession.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Some of the background contestants are only referred to by their states. Near the end, it's revealed that it's because they all have the same first name. And the same middle name.
- Fire-Forged Friends: Nicole and Shanti become friends after being sucked into quicksand. All the contestants become friends after living on the island together.
- Footnote Fever: There's a lot of snarking going on in the footnotes.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: Taylor starts out as irritating and crosses the line with her callous transphobic comments after Petra's reveal. However, when the radio is repaired and she realizes that she's been wrong and her life is falling apart, she becomes more sympathetic, complete with Freudian Excuse… for all of one chapter until she's incapacitated. She's not dead, but she's been drugged out of her mind to keep her from revealing the Corporation's plan, and the others leave her be. Subverted later when you see that she's still fighting to regain her lucidity and she ends up saving the girls.
- Hurricane of Puns: Petra and Sinjin trade Charles Dickens puns.
- Important Haircut: Tiara has an emotional breakdown and chops her hair with a machete. Petra fixes it, giving her short spiky, "warrior princess hair."
- Improbable Weapon: They make a catapult out of a shoe. The Corporation uses Lady Stache-Off Hair remover as an explosive.
- Informed Judaism: Adina's Judaism comes up all of two times.
- Inspirationally Disadvantaged: Sosie, who is partially deaf, plays this up for the cameras. In truth, she hates it and just wants to be seen as a girl and not just the token disabled girl.
- Irony: Taylor, the one most committed to the beauty pageant, is the only one who does not participate.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Agent Jones is taken down when Taylor shoots him with a poison dart, the same kind he used to drug her for days.
- Mad Love: Gender-flipped, with MoMo fawning over a disinterested and manipulative Ladybird.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Ladybird Hope is clearly based on Sarah Palin and Agent Harris is George Bush. Word of God says that Sinjin is based on David Levithan.
- Not With the Safety On, You Won't: Occurs when the girls have to take down Harris. This is Harris' eventual downfall when he forgets the safety in front of a killer snake.
- Obfuscating Insanity: Taylor's not entirely sane, but she played up her insanity to make the Corporation underestimate her.
- Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In-character example. When Shanti is scared, she loses her fake British Indian accent and starts talking like a Valley Girl.
- One-Steve Limit: Averted. Miss Ohio, Miss Arkansas, Miss New Mexico and Miss Montana are all named Caitlyn, and their middle name is Asheley, although Ohio has two "e"s in hers.
- Parody Commercial: Fake advertisements for, among other things, plastic surgery ("Breast in Show. Because, 'You're perfect, just the way you are,' is what your guidance counselor says. And she's an alcoholic"), TV shows ("Captains Bodacious IV: Badder and More Bodaciouser") and Maxi Pad Pets ("Brought to you by the Corporation: In your homes and in your pants.).
- Quicksand Sucks: It gets Nicole and Shanti. Lampshaded by Nicole: "That's just a desert island trope."
- Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: Adina believes this, dismissing makeovers and beauty as something society constructed to keep women in line. Jennifer and Shanti don't argue otherwise, but also mention that they're having fun with it anyhow and not everything has to be empowering.
- Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: The root of Mary Lou's issues. She has a high sex drive and enjoys taking the lead, but her mother, first boyfriend, and school all slut-shamed her for it until she took a purity pledge, causing her to believe that her sexual desires were dirty and monstrous. Her relationship with Tane, who not only allows but actually likes her being dominant, helps her get over it.
- Shark Pool: Mary Lou and Tane are slowly lowered into a piranha pit. It's lampshaded, "You really have seen too many Loch Lomond movies."
- Stab the Scorpion: Taylor levels a gun at Adina, and shoots a Mook behind her.
- That's No Moon: The volcano is a secret base for The Corporation.
- Trans Tribulations: Petra is transgender. She takes feminizing hormones and would have gotten the full surgery if she could afford it, and entered the Miss Teen Dream Contest to raise awareness for transgender rights.
- Token Minority: Deconstructed with Nicole and Shanti, who are well aware that the Corporation's beauty contest is only interested in one girl of color and are competing with each other for the title, and have derailed themselves to whoever fits the Token Minority role the best.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: The beauty queens come up with a detailed plan for the Miss Teen Dream Pageant, but it fails and they have to improvise.
- What You Are in the Dark: A Central Theme as the girls learn to shed their manufactured personalities for the cameras and start being who they really are the longer they stay on the island.
- Whole-Plot Reference: Much like Lord of the Flies was a giant middle finger to Coral Island, this book flips off Lord of the Flies in return.
