A face framed by a collar
The contest is a form of gurning: making an exaggerated, distorted face for an audience. Contestants put their heads through a rigid collar, which turns a private grimace into a kind of living portrait. The frame also limits how they can pose, so the performance depends on what they can do with their eyes, mouth, cheeks, and jaw.
The point was to reverse the usual contest
Most beauty contests reward features judged attractive. Gurning flips that expectation: competitors try to make their faces look as grotesque as possible, and the ugliest expression wins. The collar makes the contrast especially clear—the face is presented like a display, but the desired result is not symmetry or polish. It is a memorable distortion.
That reversal is the joke and the skill. A contestant has to hold an expression long enough for spectators or judges to take it in, turning an instant of comic ugliness into a staged performance. The winner is not simply the person with the least conventionally attractive face; it is the person who can make the most striking one.
