Columnist Susan Snyder: Contest suits us just fine

Friday, Sept. 7, 2001 | 9:07 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Fridays, Sundays and Tuesdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

Does baling wire float?

Not that the New Mexico woman who fashioned her bikini from the unlikely material actually planned to swim. She and 21 other creative and scantily suited women weren't interested in taking a dip last weekend. Each hoped to win the $1,500 grand prize in the 13th annual Hot Damn! National Homemade Bikini Contest finals poolside at Treasure Island.

A Georgia woman sporting four strategically placed clamshells and a basketball probably could have survived a dip, and several of the contestants had surgically implanted personal flotation devices. But this competition was about money. There were $1,500 checks for the winner of the U.S. division and the international division (i.e., Canada).

Rules, such as they were, required that bikinis cover the bare minimum of important spots and be made of anything except cloth.

Past contestants have used bumper stickers and even plastic sandwich bags filled with water and live goldfish, said Angela Wyka, spokeswoman for Patrick Henry Creative Promotions, the Texas firm in charge of the event.

"Last year's winner's theme was Lucky Charms," Wyka said. "She came out with a cereal box around her and Lucky Charms stuck everywhere. She somehow made milk come out and squirt into a bowl."

(If that offended you, it may be best to turn to the crossword puzzle. This ain't no 4-H contest.)

The eight-judge panel consisted of a woman who won in 1999 and seven businessmen who should be commended for successfully explaining their Labor Day weekend "assignment" to their families.

New Mexico's baling-wire babe was the first to strut across the stage, followed by a young woman from Springfield, Mass., who wore a few acorns spray-painted gold held in place with less gold string than most people put on a Christmas package. She carried a plastic squirt bottle of honey, and, oh, never mind.

An Ohio woman wore nothing but teeny baseball bases covering all the important places. One guess where home plate was located. (If you can't, you already should be working the crossword puzzle.) A young lady from Honolulu sported colored beads strung on wire covering her top -- sorta -- and lashed an all-day lollipop to her nether regions.

Misty Graves, a 24-year-old single mother of three from Indiana, made it to the night's semifinals with her bikini fashioned entirely from cassette tape.

"We drove 2,000 miles in 24 hours to get here," said Elisha Rainbolt, a cousin who screamed support from the sidelines along with Graves' mother. "She's an at-home mom, but she dances on the side."

Other hopefuls included a Tampa, Fla., woman who covered her assets with white vinyl stick-on hands and a Kansas City, Mo., woman who wore only a thin layer of pink latex paint fashioned to look like a bikini.

A Georgia gal took top U.S. honors by arranging playing cards in a torso-length V and pulling a rabbit out of her hat. (If not for the rabbit, no one would have noticed the hat.)

Canada's winning bikini babe also used a playing-card theme, fashioning small boxes in the shape of suit symbols. She did some magic trick involving a photo of Elvis and shot flames from her "bra."

So we may never know whether baling wire floats. But we learned silicone doesn't burn.