There’s a moment in every beauty pageant when some of the contestants feel time stand still. Imagine being one of them.

The members of the court — the contestants who didn’t win the title but who will at least get something tangible out of the experience — have all been announced. You’re not one of them.

Now you’re on stage trying to keep that beauty pageant smile frozen on your face, even though you know that unless you have out-scored and out-performed all the other remaining contestants, you will go home with nothing.

Aiko — the owner and producer of the Universal Show Queen Pageant goes by a single name, saying “If Madonna and Cher can have one name, so can I” — knows that feeling first-hand. In 1994 some friends talked her into entering the Universal Show Queen Pageant — billed then and now as the ultimate in “boy beautiful” competition. Aiko wasn’t planning to be a pageant queen. She was shy and quiet, and she was already committed to helping build the pageant stage.

Then one of the contestants dropped out, Aiko’s friends were persuasive, and she found herself painting the set and also preparing for competition.

One very hectic month later, Aiko was standing on stage. It would be the title for her or nothing.

“People starting running up to the stage and telling me, ‘Oh my God, you won, you won!’ People were chanting my name, and I was thinking, ‘No, I could not have have won this pageant,’” Aiko reminisced recently.

“The girl that was favored (to win the title) had been called for first runner-up. I was still in disbelief. Then, when they called my name, I learned I’d won by one point.”

Someone else will experience a similar time-stands-still moment Saturday, when Aiko presents the 35th Annual Show Queen Pageant at the Hawai‘i Convention Center.

The pageant features male contestants in theatrical, female personas, wearing extravagant costumes, makeup and headwear. With glamorous, Vegas-like stage productions, it’s an over-the-top exercise in beauty and talent competition.

NINE CONTESTANTS are competing for the title of Universal Show Queen 2018. Contestants are judged in four categories — Black & White Couture (15 points), Evening Gown (25 points), Talent (25 points) and ShowGirl Costume (35 points).

The winner’s name will be added to a list that begins with Universal Show Queen 1984 Linda DeCrimson and continues to the incumbent, Universal Show Queen 2017 Vicky Chavarria. DeCrimson was the first of 17 winners from Hawaii. Chavarria lives in Los Angeles. There have also been winners from nine other states, and one each from Cuba and Taiwan.

“This year the contestant coming the farthest is from Florida,” Aiko said, “but I’ve got contacts from Thailand and the Philippines so they’re gathering their ammunition, I guess you could say, to come here (in the future).”

The level of competition has changed “immensely” since 1994, she said.

“It’s a lot tougher now days. Everything from the costumes to the talent. Before the girls mostly concentrated on just the headpiece. Now its a headpiece and a back-piece — like these huge costumes — it’s all like a lot, and the bar has been raised a lot too.

Every year there’s always one contestant that just blows everybody out of the water, and then from there people try to out-do that and so it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.”

Aiko and her friends got her ready in a month. In recent years most contestants have spent a least a year preparing for competition. Some are prepping for 2020, Aiko said: creating a one-of-a-kind couture design, obtaining a pageant-quality evening down, working up a five-minute talent routine, and assembling an extravagant feathers-and-bead showgirl costume.

Fundraising is part of the process. Contestants from outside Oahu have travel costs, in addition to the expenses of costuming and choreography.

Out-of-towners bring their showgirl costumes here in pieces for assembly; often, Aiko said, mailing boxes and tubes full of pheasant feathers to friends here can be less expensive than shipping everything by plane.

SOMETHING THAT has not changed since 1984 is the format — female impersonation — and the mission statement: “To promote and enhance the art of female illusion and impersonation. In addition, to showcase to the world the multitalented community for which we serve and positively promote.”

“There’s a bunch of contestants that live as women 24/7,” Aiko explained. “Some are in shows where they live. There’s a few of them that are in a regular weekly show, and that’s their income — being a showgirl. Some go across the country and enter as many pageants as they can, and then there some who will enter a pageant as a dream to do it.

“There are a few big pageants across the country, and Show Queen is one of them — that’s like to enter Miss America or Miss USA. (Female impersonators) can’t enter Miss America or Miss USA, so this is their opportunity to enter a beauty pageant and, of course, try to win.”

As with most other beauty/scholarship pageants, winning requires scoring consistently in every round of competition.

“We’ve had contestants who won the ShowGirl category but didn’t place (overall), because they placed lower in the other categories,” Aiko said.

“My advice to all the girls is always to be consistent — ‘cause you can be first place, first place, second place and then fifth place, and that fifth place can pull you down versus someone who is second, second, second, second. Some of them get it and some don’t — there’s been girls that have not won any division but they end up winning the title because they were consistent. You never know.”

“Some of them study. They watch all kinds of different pageants just to see, and some think that what they have is great. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

IN RECENT years Aiko and producers of other female impersonation shows have been dealing with various takes on the theory that gender is a matter of self-identification rather than anatomy.

“(The pageant) is about the art of female impersonation, and for me that’s what the backbone of it is, and it’s worked for 35 years,” Aiko said. Since the idea of “boy beautiful” is males creating the illusion that they are females, contestants must have had “male parts” at birth. Whether males who have completed a surgical process of becoming physically female can still compete as female imper­sonators is a subject of controversy within the community.

Aiko favors allowing those women to compete, although some contestants fear that a competitor who is physically a woman would have an unfair advantage.

“I said, ‘That’s not necessarily true. She may be a woman now, but she may not bring it to the stage, so don’t be afraid of that. If anything, that should empower you to beat her even more,’” the producer said. “Whether you still have your (male) parts or not, or you’ve changed, if you want to enter, you’re more than welcome to.”

For Aiko, the pageant is a way to bring the community together and give those who choose to compete “a chance to showcase (themselves) and have their little 15 minutes of fame on stage.”

“I want to just keep elevating the pageant every year,” she said. “A lot of people tell me it’s like a reunion when they can all get together and see friends they haven’t seen all year long. That’s kinda why I do it. I love doing it.”