Beauty Queens

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is a story brought to you by The Corporation.

A plane of Beauty Pageant 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.


 * Action Girl: By the end, all of the women. Taylor and Adina especially.
 * Acme Products: The Corporation.
 * Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Frequent.
 * Beauty Pageant: Duh.
 * Big Damn Heroes: The end. Everyone.
 * Bland-Name Product: Babez dolls. And more.
 * Brainless Beauties: Miss Alabama and Miss Mississippi.
 * Cloudcuckoolander: Tiara, and to a lesser extent, Mary-Lou.
 * Desert Island
 * Evil, Inc.: The Corporation.
 * Five-Man Band
 * Improbable Weapon: They make a catapult out of a shoe.
 * Mushroom Samba: Weird, hallucinogenic fruit samba.
 * Product Placement: In-universe, there's a whole TV show based on it.
 * Quicksand Sucks: It gets Nicole and Shanti.
 * Rule of Symbolism: Just about everything is symbolic. Seriously.
 * Sassy Black Woman / Black Best Friend: Nicole doesn't want to be one.
 * Straw Feminist: Adina. She gets called on it.
 * Token Minority: Deconstructed with Nicole and Shanti.