It's that time of year again! The new Miss America will be crowned in just a matter of days. The pageant has recently moved back to its hometown of Atlantic CIty, NJ from Las Vegas.
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Luckily for me, I am fifteen minutes south of Atlantic City. I no longer have to watch the pageant on TV! I get to go see it LIVE! This pageant stuff is huge for my aunt and me. She was the one who got me into pageantry. We are always going to local pageants together and even volunteering in them, too. Although my personal pageant days are over, (I was my town's Little Miss Ocean City in 2001) I am still very involved in the pageant world. This gives something for my aunt and I to bond over. It is something that we love to talk about, watch, and even judge the contestants ourselves. Over the years, I have to say that I have gotten good at the whole judging thing. I have learned what the judges are looking for, what is expected, and what is accepted of the contestants to be the new title holder.
My crowning moment!
August, 2001
August, 2001
My stepmother, on the other hand, absolutely hates pageants. She thinks these "things" are degrading to women. That these girls are being judged on who is the prettiest because she is "just for show and men to gawk over". On the way there, you could just tell she was dreading her decision to come. The only reason she agreed to it was the fact that she did not want my aunt and I in Atlantic City alone because we are not the best with directions, even though she told me the reason she wanted to comes was that she wanted to spend time with me. I almost felt bad for her-- I could tell she was just miserable.
She was silent for the majority of the car ride until she blew up. I kind of felt that this was coming. I knew her viewpoint on the whole thing and I am sure she was getting infuriated by the way my aunt and I were just so excited over it. We actually couldn't stop talking about it. We just kept going on and on about it and my mother sat there quietly. Until, that is, her big blow up.
"I am not saying that women do not have a right to participate in these pageants. This mainstreaming of beauty contests impact all women from a young age until my age.
It makes the young girls want to be a pageant queen as their life long dream. It gives women an ideal body image to measure themselves against.
We all know how difficult society is on us and the way we look and how we feel about ourselves. When you two are sitting here encouraging women to participate, you are just choosing one woman and elevating her at the expense of her peers and flat out judging her! Yes, these beauty pageants offer opportunities of a life time and scholarships, but what does that really mean?
Does that mean only beautiful people deserve these opportunities and scholarships? What kind of empowerment are we talking about? When positions of power are male dominated, how does winning a pageant really make a difference to the power relations in our country?
These pageants dehumanize women by focusing on their physical appearance, which has everything to do with genetics and nothing that the woman herself can control. Beauty pageants reduce women to dolls that smile endlessly, don't sweat, glow and are elevated from normal women because they look flawless and are seen as superior.
The pageant business is about comparing these unique normal women and judging them with the support of the entire nation. Since when is universal female beauty an image of small wasted, long straight, voluminous hair, perfectly tanned, thin long legged and pouty lipped women? Even more so, how many people actually naturally fit this description? Probably hardly anyone.
So, why do we as a nation celebrate this image? These contests take place all over the world? Celebrating female beauty should not mean for us to resort to eating disorders that compromise our health or make us waste our economic resources just to celebrate our female beauty as we see the beauty contestants do.
Why do these young girls need to be judged by strangers to be told that they are beautiful? Why do young girls today need these role models to inspire and motivate them if all they are doing is not achieving anything but being patted on the back for having the most attractive body shape, the most suitable hight and the most suitable smile? That is not an accomplishment or an achievement, unless you count dieting and learning how to not fall while walking in heels.
If the argument is that beauty pageants are for confident woman, what exactly are these women confident about? Their good looks that they were born with? We as women do not need to adhere to a standard of beauty which tells us if we are not thin, tall, tanned and have long straight hair, you are not beautiful!"
Needless to say, the rest of the car ride was silent. Dead silent. And, I couldn't even begin do describe the rage of anger inside of me.
From that moment on, I wanted nothing more than for her to just leave. For her to let my aunt and I go off on our own. I don't think I have ever felt this angry before. The one thing that I love the most, she is here completing bashing.
I know that my stepmother does not belong in the pageant world. She does not fit in, but at the same time, I don't think she wants to. Attempting to get her ready for the pageant was a process, similar to Gracie Lou Freebush's...
I know that my stepmother does not belong in the pageant world. She does not fit in, but at the same time, I don't think she wants to. Attempting to get her ready for the pageant was a process, similar to Gracie Lou Freebush's...
As dolled up as my aunt and I could get her, you could just tell that she wasn't comfortable. She could put on her fakest eyelashes and her prettiest dress and still have a look of misery on her face. No matter how hard we tried, we knew it was a loss. We came to the conclusion that pageants are just not for my stepmother.