Backstory: There was a contest on Facebook to find the next "Miss Cheerwine." Cheerwine is a super Southern bottled beverage favored by NASCAR drivers and Carolina frat boys. So--me in a nutshell. I had to write an essay and submit some semi-sexy pictures. I wrote my essay in about thirty minutes, as it'd been sitting inside me for ten years or so. Done. Easy peasy. I had this shit down. Then I tried to submit it. Oops. Error. Pictures too sexy? No. No, it wasn't that. I was too fucking OLD. I was 26. The cut-off age was 25. I desperately tried to change my DOB. Nope, Facebook was too smart for that. Okay...panic set in. I had written a Paris Review-worthy Cheerwine essay and it deserved to be read. So...nothing to do now but lie. Make a fake Facebook page. (This was all done at my work, by the way. No shame here.) So I made the fake Facebook, where I lied about my age, and also about my current city, as you also had to live in the Carolinas or Tennessee to qualify. The whole thing was just becoming a giant failure of my life but I had to complete this sad task. Needless to say, I did not win Miss Cheerwine. But I now have this essay to remind me of what could have been...
I’m a Southern girl through and through. Born and raised in Austin, TX, I’ve always been amazed by the beauty and history of our southeastern states. From the sandy shores of North Carolina to the plains of West Texas, our history runs true and deep.
Cheerwine represents the South at its finest. A locally owned product with a history that goes almost as far back as North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, the bubbly beverage is the only kind in our country still produced by the same family.
To call it a crowd-pleaser is an understatement. The love of Cheerwine borders on fanaticism. This is a brand that benefited from crowd-sourcing and user-generated content and word-of-mouth before all those silly Internet buzzwords even existed. Cheerwine is successful after 90 years because of one simple reason: it’s delicious. And it invokes memories of long, hot, Southern summers: lazy afternoons in hammocks, front porch talks with your neighbors, pickup trucks and swimming holes.
I see myself as the ideal Miss Cheerwine. My experience in public relations, event planning, and customer-facing jobs are ideal for the role. A brand ambassador is essential in knowing what makes their brand unique, and communicating their love for the product and its history to the world. I would be honored to represent Cheerwine and its effervescent brand this summer. I see 2011 as the year Cheerwine becames not just the soft drink of the Carolinas, but the cherry-flavored beverage of our great country.
