As usual, the competition was tough this year in the Miss Exotic World pageant at the Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekender, the annual benefit in Las Vegas for the Burlesque Hall fo Fame museum. The entire tournament — Best Boylesque, Best Debut, Best Group — was hosted by Armitage Shanks, who did a stellar job holding everything down through the marathon of a show.

So many amazing performances went down — Gin Minsky tapped up a storm, Coco Lectric was effervescent in ruffles, and Ginger Valentine was classic as always. Peekaboo Pointe smoldered in red — as did Ruby Joule — and Sina King went wild with her flowing scepter. RedBone’s performance to MC Lucious’s song “Boom I’ve Got Your Boyfriend” was fucking fabulous, she killed it. Everyone had the song in their head the next day. Lola Frost brought some flapper flavor and boozy sass to the evening, and Perle Noire took everyone’s breath away in a pink duster sewed by Big Fannie Annie.

The new Miss Exotic World, Reigning Queen of Burlesque, though, is Trixie Little! Already a huge star in the burlesque world, she’s a fabulous, salty character from Baltimore, recently the subject of a documentary film titled Us, Naked: Trixie and Monkey. During her performance Trixie peeled her dress off her like a banana — literally! When she came out on stage to accept her trophy she was donning a fluffy coat over a sparkly bikini. She put her giant trophy down, threw off the coat, put her foot on her trophy and lit up a cigarette like a bad ass. All hail Queen Trixie!

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Heather Schofner is the features editor of VerbicideMagazine.com and the owner of Olympia, Washington-based Heather Schofner Photography.