SOLOMONS ISLAND, Maryland — The lady in red is Honey Boo Boo all grown up, a 40-year-old, blue-eyed Maritimer in stilettos and a sash that says MRS. CANADA, the stuff of Mountain Dew dreams and medical science. She is sitting in the coffee shop of a Holiday Inn on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, waiting to strut her head-turning attributes in a pageant that may or may not see her crowned as the most attractive, articulate and accomplished married woman in the Size 2 world.
You'd never guess that, five years ago, Melanie Ruth Elizabeth Wildman of Charlottetown, P.E.I. weighed 230 pounds.
"In Canada," she says, "I think there is a perception of pageantry that it does a real disservice to women. If you focus just on beauty, that might be true. But here, if you don't have community involvement, if you're not well-spoken, if you don't play well with others, if you're not able to represent your country well, you're not going to do well.
Melanie Wildman, mother of three, is one of 50 women who have assembled in small-town Maryland for the annual Mrs. World pageant. All of the entrants are spectacularly configured, commercially savvy, matrimonially indentured, and charitably inclined. For example: Mrs. U.S.A. is a raven-haired, 33-year-old stunner (and neo-natal intensive-care nurse) from Tulsa whose brother died four years ago from an overdose of prescription drugs; she founded an addiction-prevention resource centre in response. Mrs. Russia is a television presenter from Moscow campaigning to find a cure for Infantile Cerebral Paralysis.
Charlottetown's Melanie Wildman, of Weigh Loss Forever, was among 11 finalists in the Mrs. World pageant in Maryland.
Last year, the Mrs. World contest was held in Guangzhou. (Kaley Sparling, a counsellor of sexual-abuse victims and a professional wakeboarder from landlocked Boise, Idaho, was the winner.) Next year it moves to the port city of Sevastopol, Russia, which until recently was the port city of Sevastopol, Ukraine. It is the brainchild of a 79-year-old, happily married, Angeleno impresario named David Z. Marmel whose imagination was piqued a few decades ago when he attended one of those much more famous pageants for the unwed.
Wildman is on her third pageant and her second husband, a businessman and bodybuilder named Blair Enright. She once finished second in a "Mrs. Universe" contest — beaten, perhaps, by a mermaid from Neptune — but she failed to place in the top ten of last year's Mrs. World.
Seeing her at a Holiday Inn with her sister sirens from Peru, Singapore, Bulgaria, etc., no one would suspect that, just a few years ago, before she underwent bariatric surgery, Melanie Ruth Elizabeth Wildman was a member of North America's overweight multitude. Now, she and Enright own a post-operative counselling and healthy-lifestyle company called WLF Medical (Weight Loss Forever) with bureaus in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C.
"Did Blair marry you because you are gorgeous?" I wonder.
All Melanie Wildman wants is a healthier, slimmer universe. That, and a sash that says MRS. WORLD.
Update: Mrs. Belarus was named the winner of the Mrs. World pageant on Wednesday night. Melanie Wildman of Charlottetown, Mrs. Canada, was among 11 finalists.