not to make the only analysis of her ever bc no one talks about drop dead gorgeous but thinking about how lisa swenson spends much of the movie talking about her (gay) older brother peter and his drag shows and his acting with so much love and how her room is covered in posters for broadway shows and it and nyc (famously/stereotypically gay city, esp broadway) are recurring motifs with her and how much of her character is centered on him. on his performance, especially of femininity. and how joining the pageant (a performance of femininity) is just what girls do in mount rose. and how when she quits (the "just what girls do" performance of femininity) and gives amber her costume so she can compete despite an establishment (gladys leeman and all she represents as far as class and privilege and gender performance go) stacked against her, she says it's fine because she wouldn't win, comparing herself to peter, saying, "this family only needs one liza and peter's got much better legs". one of them can perform femininity in a way that's fun and impressive and she's not it, to her. how she says her parents won't be that mad since they only had her to give peter one of her kidneys, as if it doesn't matter, just a sad fact of her life that she is second to him. how she is second to him, how this is gendered. how she gives amber a suit in a performance that's all dresses, how that nyc-stained (and thus queer-stained) costume is eventually what carries her to the top, to the national level of girl performance, which she walks away from as it falls apart due to capitalistic corruption (tax evasion/fraud, specifically). how they kiss each other's cheeks and hold each other. how she is more upset than amber is that she doesn't win, how when her father scolds her for quitting by comparing her to peter, she screams that he's gay. how it sounds like that's something obvious to her that he didn't know, either because peter told her or because she sees his queerness in his actions. how she is filled with such a genuine passion and love and charisma that despite all this she does not feel like a character made as a plot device, whose sole trait is that she loves her gay broadway brother, but that she is a young queer woman dealing with the staunch, conservative gender roles of her hometown (an early scene has the pageant staff shut talking liberal women and their hairy armpits and dressing like men) compared to that fantasy world of queer nyc, with her queer brother and his drag shows. she puts herself second and compares herself to others because that is how her parents treat her, but she still has her own vivacity. she is a person. and even though she didn't get to sing new york, new york in her suit, she uplifted another girl she thought deserved her shot at upending the leemans' system. it's noble and it's sad and i really really like her and i hope she got to nyc someday, where she could kiss girls and kick it with peter. that's all