The contestants of the Miss Hooker Pageant 2012.

While elsewhere contestants are disqualified from beauty pageants for being transgender, in Los Angeles, a dozen women will compete for the title of Miss Hooker.

Artist Natalia Fabia will present the 2012 iteration of her Hooker Beauty Pageant, a quasi-annual event that goes down at Dragonfly Bar in Hollywood, on Friday. The largest name man in comedy, Brian Posehn, will host; the flier bills him, if you're not familiar, as a cast member of Just Shoot Me, The Sarah Silverman Show and Mr. Show. Judges will include rock 'n' roll guitarist Dave Navarro, infamous porn starlet Traci Lords, and perennial sexpot Alexis Arquette. The flier advertises beyond baton twirling and a fantastical show and also danger. With contestants like Kitty Cadillac and Miss Demeanor (seen below) attendees certainly seem to be in for an eyeful.

It's as yet unclear if contestants will vary in the evaluation or embrace of the term hooker, though competing in the pageant implies a desire to be at the top of the hooker pile. The contest, which will feature typical pageant categories such as evening gown, talent and interview, is presented by the Corey Helford Gallery in Los Angeles, as the opening event to Fabia's new curated gallery show. It's titled, appropriately, Hookers, and is a collective interpretation of the modern industrious woman, and realized by a superb and indescribable group of the finest painters working in the contemporary idiom.

Judging from Fabia's liberal use of the word as a term of endearment on her Twitter, it's a term of empowerment rather than degradation. But just to be sure, Fabia toldthe Huffington Post that hooker can be someone who sells one's talents and abilities, talent, or name for money, (but it also means) a rad, strong, talented, tough, colorful, independent, stylish, and beautiful woman.