Girls Compete to Boop-Boop-A-Doop

Celine Obeso is in fine form. The 3-year-old blows a one-handed kiss, a two-handed kiss, and then stuns the competition with a rousing “Boop-Boop-A-Doop.”

Under a blazing California sun in early July, she and dozens of other girls take the stage in Montebello. Dressed in garter belts and red satin dresses, feathers and pillbox hats, they compete in what is probably the world’s only annual “Baby Betty Boop Look-A-Like” contest.

“The winning quality is not makeup, but God’s natural gifts--the eyes, the lips, the cute smile,” Denise Hagopian, the event’s organizer, booms to an audience of mostly Mexican American families.

Scores of moms, dads and grandmothers gathered under a tent in a narrow parking lot in front of Hagopian’s costume and toy store to watch, enraptured, as the girls mimicked Betty Boop, a big-eyed character known as “America’s Cartoon Sweetheart.”

Boop became the baby-voice sex symbol of the 1920s, appearing in more than 100 cartoons created by the Fleischer family, the same people who animated Popeye. Her famous tag line, “Boop-Boop-A-Doop,” finished every high-pitched song and symbolized a lethal combination of innocence and sexuality.

As winners were announced, applause burst through the heavy heat of the tent. “No. 76,” Hagopian shouted. “Here she comes, the big eyes win.”

Girls ranging from newborns to 5-year-olds displayed their Boopish best, competing for most friendly, best costume, best look-a-like, best smile and best entertainer.

Hagopian, a heavyset, energetic former dancer who has run the contest for 13 years, denies that it is a beauty pageant. “This is for a child to have the self-esteem to go on stage,” she said.

“You need to learn at a very young age that you can hold a microphone and look out at an audience. Have you seen how many football players or basketball players cannot communicate verbally?” she asked. “It’s embarrassing. They’re making $20 million a game and they can’t say, ‘Duh.’ ”

Hagopian began collecting “Boopabilia” in the early 1980s. She was first drawn to the character’s dark, frilly hair, which resembles her own. When a back operation immobilized her, she studied all 115 Boop films and grew to admire the character.

“Because I was laying down for a year I watched all the cartoons by date, in order,” she said. For her, Betty represented liberation: a single, fun-loving woman who did as she pleased. Boop-Boop-A-Doop, so to speak.

“Betty is sexy, she’s a tease, but that doesn’t mean she’s a hooker,” Hagopian said. “She wasn’t scared to run for president. She wasn’t scared to go in front of the judge and say, ‘The policeman pulled me over because he wanted my phone number; I wasn’t speeding.’ ”

A spokeswoman for King Features, which manages the Boop trademark, said Betty Boop is at “her best now,” with worldwide interest in the character. “Women and girls identify with her. She is feisty,” said spokeswoman Claudia Smith.

Smith said retail sales of Betty Boop items gross about $400 million a year, five times more than a decade ago. On contest day, Hagopian’s store, Heavenly Choice, was full of Boop items: Boop boxers, $17; Boop statues, $275; Boop lamps, $75; and Boop T-shirts that read: “Be Sexy. Be Sweet. Just Be Boop.”

Susan Duran, 40, admired a porcelain Boop statue in a locked glass case. A member of the Betty Boop Collectors Club, she started buying memorabilia after realizing that her daughter looked like Boop.

“I have everything, everything,” she said, claiming that robbers once stole $1,000 worth of Boopabilia from her home. She owns statues and clothes, and has spent $110 to redecorate her bathroom Boop-style. “I haven’t done the tiles yet. We just bought the house in January,” she said.

Next she hopes to paint a Boop mural on her bedroom wall. “They even have trading cards out and I have them too.”

The market for Boopabilia has bounced boopishly upward in recent years, Hagopian says. A vintage Boop cookie jar now sells for $1,500, up from $29 in 1983. Boxes of Boop Band-Aids that Hagopian once gave away now cost $100.

Outside in the parking lot, Carolyn Rogers, a retired legal secretary, hawks Boop T-shirts. “I’m trying to grow my business with Betty Boop and ‘I Love Lucy’ memorabilia, and maybe a little Elvis thrown in,” she said.

At the competition, Monica Bermudez, 30, leads her 3-year-old down from the stage. “She dances, she sings, she loves to kiss people,” Bermudez said. “I think she looks like Betty Boop and it’s fun.”