Beauty Queens
Beauty Queens by Libba Bray is a 2011 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.
Not to be confused with the Serbian girlband of the same name.
Tropes used in Beauty Queens include:
- 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.