You see a line of women walking out on a stage, all of them stunningly beautiful and wearing six-inch heels and brightly colored bikinis. They’re vaguely reminiscent of tropical birds searching for mates, and the entire set-up seems vaguely surreal, and you may wonder if you’re stuck in some teenage boy’s imagination. But no, this is reality. It’s America, 2016, and this is a beauty pageant.
Beauty pageants have a very suspicious history of racism and sexism. They were created by P.T. Barnum, the man famous for running freak shows. Therefore, the beauty pageant’s purpose, from its inception, has been to judge the appearances of women, objectifying them and dehumanizing them in the process. The women who march confidently on stage in bikinis in front of a national audience are all being ogled, and I would assume, judged on how they look—the Miss America website doesn’t mention what judging criteria even is, so I can only assume. If this wasn’t bad enough, there is the obvious fact that these women all have a body type that is the closest a living woman can get to Barbie. You might as well be watching the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show, but no, this is somehow a scholarship competition.
During the national pageants, this lack of diversity almost always seems the case. These women are not individuals, not in the eyes of the audience, and I suspect not in the eyes of the judges, either. After all, last year Steve Harvey—the host of the Miss Universe pageant—infamously named the wrong woman as the winner, which, while embarrassing, said something about the pageant in general. These women are not individuals, they are not meant to be. The moment they put on that sash, they go from being people to being smiling, waving symbols of wherever they are from. And who wins? The prettiest girl in the room.
Miss America and other, similar competitions, tout themselves as scholarship pageants—which, frankly makes me very suspicious. Aren’t scholarships usually given for athletic ability, or academics? And if that is the motivation for young women competing, they should be aware that it actually takes spending money to reach the national level of competition, where you might just be lucky enough to win a scholarship that’s actually helpful. After all, for a pageant dress that is from the current season, you might pay, on the low end, $1,700. A whole industry feeds off beauty pageants. And yet, Miss America still claims to be the provider of the most scholarship money to women in the world—as John Oliver explains better than I can.
http://https://youtu.be/oDPCmmZifE8
Even with the dubious amount of money, what does it say about our society that the largest women’s scholarship is given on the basis of beauty?
I want to be clear that I am not condemning the contestants in these pageants. Many of them are bright, intelligent, and interesting individuals. But the pageants don’t allow the women to display many of these qualities. Of course, the talent competition does this to an extent, but the problem is that these women must have a talent that is in some way performable—and many of these talents are traditionally feminine, completing the image of an “accomplished” young lady. And the interview portion is notoriously impossible, with women either given an intense political question that can’t be answered or a question that seems utterly ridiculous. Either way, the interviews are almost designed to make these women sound stupid, and they end up looking like caricatures instead of actual people.
One of my friends entered a local competition for Miss America at the city level. There were only four contestants. She told me that for her the competition was about being able to represent a community. Again, I don’t see how a swimsuit competition actually ties into that, but my friend and I agree to disagree. I respect her opinion and choice to compete, she is an adult and makes her own choices. But what about the girls who aren’t?
It was in the news recently that Miss Teen USA ditched the swimsuit competition in favor of athletic wear—which I was happy about, until my eyes doubled back and I focused on the word teen. A competition for underage girls had them walking around on a public stage. These young girls were being blatantly sexualized, and no one saw a problem with this until 2016? These young ladies cannot yet legally consent to anything, which makes the entire concept rather disturbing. Not to mention when the contestants are under the age of 10.
If beauty pageants are not objectifying their contestants, what is the point of them, then? I honestly don’t know. That was their original purpose, and from what I can tell, not much has changed. The women who choose to compete do so for their own reasons, and I respect that, as it does take a great amount of courage to take part in a national competition. So are beauty pageants relevant? You decide. As for me, I really wish they weren’t.
