The Pageant

Are you ready now? Yep.

Smile. Oh, sorry.

Smile again.

APPLAUSE

My name is Trinity Porter

and I am Miss Nude Sydney.

I'm Summer Stevens, Miss Erotica Australia for 2007.

My measurements are 36... sorry, fuck!

My name's Ellashaye, I won Miss Nude Tasmania.

I am Jessie Jackson and my hobbies include ballet,

forensic science and body sculpting.

I'm Suzie Q, I'm from Sydney. I'm Miss Nude New South Wales.

My name's Mackenzie and I'm Miss Nude Hobart.

The Miss Nude Australia is a pageant that is so credible

and so bona fide that it helps the girls to progress.

I love watching rugby union and I love reading.

Strippers can read. Yes.

Girls, uh, can I just have five minutes of your time here?

Can everyone just turn their phones off?

This is very important to you because I'm going to explain

the judging criteria, and what I'm going to read to you now

is exactly what we say to the judges every night.

Word for word, this is read to them.

So you'll know what the judging criteria is

and exactly what they're judging on, okay?

Now, the judges, the first thing we say to them,

"These contestants have invested a lot into this pageant.

"You have a responsibility and obligation

"to bring the same concentration, organisation and effort

"as the contestants.

"We're not judging biggest breasts, we're not judging the longest legs,

"nor are we judging the tightest arse.

"Her face - is it a natural one,

"or does she just flash her pearly teeth?

"Her hair - is it healthy and does it complement her face?"

The bottom line of the competition is that it is a beauty pageant.

There's a $20,000 prize to one of you.

Thanks very, very much for coming and all the very best.

It's such a unique week to be able to go out there

and be naked and keep a smile on their face

and put on such a fantastic performance.

It's just amazing.

The Miss Nude Australia

is the pageant that is the mother of all pageants.

Makes you feel like a movie star when you're not really a movie star.

Anyone that's made it through to the Miss Nude Australia

in any particular year,

it means that they've done really well in their own state.

Oh, my God!

You feel like you're standing there for ever,

you're getting this big... your teeth are getting...

your jaw's getting sore from the big smile.

I love to see the girls being so competitive.

The costuming and the music and the presentation of their shows

is just amazing.

There's no... there's no hidden agenda.

It's entertainment, of good quality and good standard.

Something to tell the grandkids.

The girl who's just got that little bit more

and that little bit of oomph is going to be the winner.

The girls to watch out for and why?

Everybody.

Yeah, I like tattoos.

It's a fighting fish. It's not quite finished yet.

My mother, oh! She never has one nice thing to say about it.

When she saw it, she lost it, she was so pissed off!

We do not want to speak about the tattoo.

I spent a fortune with baby powders and creams

to make sure that she was perfect, and I could not believe

that she would get such a hideous and gross, deformed-looking,

out-of-control, ghastly, vomitous, you name it...

I can't think of enough hideous adjectives

to describe that gross thing on her arm.

That turns her from being very classy to yuck!

I don't like it.

Hi.

So, I'm taking everybody back to where it all began.

Now, something that you might notice

about this place

is there's a pole out the front.

When I first said that I was going to be a stripper to my parents,

they weren't surprised at all

because I'd spent hours and hours and hours

spinning and climbing and mucking around on the pole out the front,

and it was always the family joke

that I would become a stripper.

Well, certainly the standing joke in the neighbourhood

when Lori was little,

because she loved swinging on the pole out the front of our house,

the standing joke was that she'd be, could possibly be, a pole dancer.

So while we were shocked that the reality came about,

the other half wasn't.

LIVELY GUITAR MUSIC

My biggest problem is...

it's not something that I want to tell my mother and father

and the grandparents more than anything,

that that is what she does.

This was our fashion parade catwalk

Mum used to make us do little shows on when we were younger.

It was good practice for Miss Nude Australia

when we're doing our parades.

I just think of old times and off I go.

Costume.

Skirt. Shorts.

Bra. G. Jacket.

How could I forget my prop?

How nice. HONKS

Formal wear.

Check with jewellery and shoes.

Yep, and me.

That's it.

I'm so excited! I've never been to Adelaide!

This is my little kitty playhouse

and I use it during my show to kind of crawl amongst...

and, you know, do some sexy little poses.

Yep, it's not going to fit, I'm telling you.

Having any title is beneficial but, you know,

when you book in a gig, you're wanting somebody special,

and when somebody says "How about Miss Nude Australia?"

people are just... they jump at the chance,

they absolutely, you know, they want to see the best of the best.

You are, that's what the title says.

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Nude Australia 1995,

here at the Crazy Horse, here's Juicy Lucy!

OLD-FASHIONED FRENCH SONG

The pageant's been going since... it started in '91, the pageant.

We were very lucky to have Miss Nude World here, Heaven Lee.

She came out from the States

and she awarded the girl with her crown and with her sash.

Miss Nude Australia 1991, which was a lady called Michelle Lane.

If they're very focused and they really know

what they want out of the industry,

whether they want to have recognition

or whether they want financial,

it's all here for them.

Morgan Summers, she was Miss Nude South Australia,

Miss Nude Australia, Miss Nude World,

Miss Nude Universe,

all virtually within those 18 months

of this girl winning the South Australia's...

Went ahead and won every possible pageant.

OLD-FASHIONED FRENCH SONG

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that strippers or exotic dancers

are just regular women

who do something slightly interesting as a job.

It doesn't mean, all the time, that they're prostitutes,

it doesn't mean they're on drugs, that they're not intelligent,

it doesn't mean they don't have other options in their life.

The majority of them choose to do it

because it's something that they love to do.

It doesn't mean you can grab their arse,

it doesn't mean they're going to have sex with you.

I don't know what... It doesn't mean they're a slut,

anything like that - it's just their job, okay,

and they usually love it, so...

HONKY TONK MUSIC

This was the first time I entered Miss Nude - look at that.

Miss Nude New South Wales, Miss Petite, 2003.

I was really bad.

My bedroom.

My pole.

Can't do much on it because you end up with one foot in the cupboard

and the other one, like, out the window, but you can try.

I don't think you have to be a straight-out exhibitionist

to be an exotic dancer, but I think you do need

to have some element of some...

that same thing that actors have, that they want to perform

and have people look at them and that kind of thing.

I don't know - I have this secret theory

that we're just dancers who, you know, couldn't cut it

or just realised that we'd never earn very much money as dancers.

So, you know, if we take our clothes off,

hey, we can make a living out of this.

To all the women out there who are offended by what we do,

we're just like you.

Yeah, you know, I get up, I eat breakfast, I walk the dog,

I pay my bills, it's the same thing,

it's just my way of paying my bills is slightly different to you.

My current boyfriend I met in a strip club,

so technically the first thing he knew about me

before he even knew my name was that I was an exotic dancer,

but it has still been a source of much contention

in our relationship, unfortunately.

He doesn't like my job at all.

At all, at all...

But even after all these years he doesn't seem to quite understand

that it's not real.

I understand that most people out of the industry

don't get that it's fantasy.

But he's been to shows and everything with me

and seen me do same thing over and over and over

and still thinks that it's, like, this real...

like I'm this crazy sexual person or whatever,

and he's like, "I can't reconcile that with who you are off stage."

I'm like, "It's not real."

But that said, I don't think any guy

is going to like other men looking at his girlfriend naked, really.

And I don't know if I want a guy who's like,

"Yeah, that's totally fine, whatever," kind of thing.

You know, I want someone to care about me enough to say something.