Sofija Stefanovic - Miss Ex-Yugoslavia: A Memoir

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Copyright 2018 by Sofija Stefanovic

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Atria Books hardcover edition April 2018

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Interior design by Amy Trombat

Jacket illustration by Payton Cosell Turner

Author photograph Michael Carr

Line art by Payton Cosell Turner

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2017045539

ISBN 978-1-5011-6574-0

ISBN 978-1-5011-6576-4 (ebook)

This is a memoir, not a history. Its a collection of memories: a story from my point of view, and not necessarily one that others would relate. I have changed some names and distinguishing details. Though my intention has been to convey the essence of everything I recount, certain events and scenes have been compressed or expanded to fulfill the needs of the story. Finally, as is the nature of memoir, dialogue is an approximation.

Yugoslavia as it was in the 1980s. Following the wars, this region is now divided into separate countries: Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Macedonia (FYROM). Kosovo declared independence in 2008, which is still disputed by Serbia.

I wouldnt normally enter a beauty pageant, but this one is special. Its a battle for the title of Miss Ex-Yugoslavia, beauty queen of a country that no longer exists. It is due to the country being no more that our shoddy little contest is happening in Australia, over eight thousand miles from where Yugoslavia once stood. My fellow competitors and I are immigrants and refugees, coming from different sides of the conflict that split Yugoslavia up. Its a weird idea for a competitionbringing young women from a war-torn country together to be objectified, but in our little diaspora, were used to contradictions.

Its 2005, Im twenty-two, and Ive been living in Australia for most of my life. Im at Joy, an empty Melbourne nightclub that smells of stale smoke and is located above a fruit-and-vegetable market. I open the door to the dressing room, and when my eyes adjust to the fluorescent lights I see that young women are rubbing olive oil on each others thighs. Apparently, this is a trick used in real competitions, one weve hijacked for our amateur version. For weeks, Ive been preparing myself to stand almost naked in front of everyone I know, and its come around quick. As I scan the shiny bodies for my friend Nina, Im dismayed to see that all the other girls have dead-straight hair, while mine, thanks to an overzealous hairdresser with a curling wand, looks like a wig made of sausages.

Doi, lutko (Come here, doll), Nina says as she emerges from the crowd of girls. Maybe we can straighten it. She brings her hand up to my hair cautiously, as if petting a startled lamb. Nina is a Bosnian refugee in a miniskirt. As a contestant, she is technically my competitor, but weve become close in the rehearsals leading up to the pageant.

Under Ninas tentative pets, the hair doesnt give. Its been sprayed to stay like this, possibly forever. I shift uncomfortably and tug on the hem of my skirt, trying to pull it lower. Just like the hair, it doesnt budge. In my language, such micro-skirts have earned their own graphic term: dopinjak , which literally means to the pussya precise term to distinguish the dopinjak from its more conservative subgenital cousin, the miniskirt.

Though several of us barely speak our mother tongue, all of us competitors are ex-Yugos, for better or worse; we come from Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. I join a conversation in which Yugo girls are yelling over one another in slang-riddled English, recalling munching on the salty peanut snack Smoki when they were little, agreeing that it was the bomb and totally sick, superior to anything one might find in our adoptive home of Australia.

The idea of a beauty pageant freaks me out, and ex-Yugoslavia as a country is itself an oxymoronbut the combination of the two makes the deliciously weird Miss Ex-Yugoslavia competition the ideal subject for my documentary film class. I feel like a double agent. Yes, Im part of the ex-Yugo community, but also Im a cynical, story-hungry, Western-schooled film student, and so Ive gone undercover among my own people. I know my community is strange, and I want to get top marks for this exclusive glimpse within. Though Ive been deriding the competition to my film-student friends, rolling my eyes at the ironies, I have to admit that this pageant, and its resurrection of my zombie country, is actually poking at something deep.

If Im honest with myself, Im not just a filmmaker seeking a story. This is my community. I want outsiders to see the human face of ex-Yugoslavia, because its my face, and the face of these girls. Were more than news reports about war and ethnic cleansing.

Who prefers to speak English to the camera? I ask the room, in English, whipping my sausage-curled head around, as my college classmate Maggie points the camera at the other contestants backstage.

Me! most of the girls say in chorus.

Whats your opinion of ex-Yugoslavia? I ask Zora, the seventeen-year-old from Montenegro.

Um, I dont know, she says.

Its complicated! someone else calls out.

As a filmmaker, I want a neat sound bite, but ex-Yugoslavia is unwieldy. Most of my fellow contestants are confused about the turbulent history of the region, and its not easy to explain in a nutshell. At the very least, I want viewers to understand what brought us here: the wars that consumed the 1990s, whose main players were Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovinathe three largest republics within the Yugoslav Federation.