The slippery slope created by pageant organizers
May 12, 2010
by Optixmom
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
Yesterday I was reading the online news and came across a piece about how the current Miss USA pageant contestants were photographed in suggestive poses wearing lingerie. So this is the new direction for the Miss USA franchise? Whose brilliant idea was this? President Paula Shugart?
Is this idea supposed to boost the brand like a push-up? I mean come on people if a televised scholarship contest starts to lose ground and lose viewers then the best thing your marketing team can think of is to sex up the contestants and have them pose in their skivvies? When did you drop this bombshell on the contestants?
Many women participate in beauty pageants as a way of earning money to go to college or to graduate school. I want to be clear on my position that I am not against pageants. I know many women that have participated and won significant scholarships and gone on to very productive lives. What I am against is this establishment taking advantage of young women because there is no one policing their policies.
I would suggest that the public watch something else the evening of the Miss USA pageant and boycott the advertisers. These options would drive home the message that the pageant organizers crossed the line. I don’t care if some bathing suits contain less material than undergarments, that is not the point. The point is that the Miss USA staff are specifically and strategically sexualizing their contestants to make a buck. I would bet that if any of the contestants had a difficult time with the photoshoot then they were either pressured to comply or shown the door. Either wear the thong and look horny or move aside. Where does the Miss USA staff draw the line? They can haze their contestants because no one will call them on it. What is next pole dancing? Dry humping the podium while answering questions about world peace? If they can get the OK on sexy lingerie picures then what else can they get away with?
Let me reiterate my stance, my beef is with the organizers, not the contestants. I thought that hazing was against the law; I guess if Donald Trump does it for ratings than it doesn’t count.
I agree, I thought this was really tacky.
Sigh, and the girls don’t understand why. When they were asked why it was okay to kick out another contestant for taking racy photos, they said it was because their own pictures were “tasteful,” hers were not. I’ve really come to hate that word, “tasteful.” It means it’s okay to exploit and not call it exploitation because it’s being done for “tasteful” reasons. What does that mean? It means when a woman’s sexuality is exploited in order to increase Miss America’s profits, it’s tasteful. When a woman sells photos of her own self for her own profit, that’s just “tasteless.”
I am sick of seeing women in their underwear. If I wanted to see women in their underwear I can go into any women’s dressing room in the city and watch women dressing and standing around in their underwear. I think that is creepy. I don’t know any woman who would do that. So clearly the underpants fascination is male centered. Other than that I can’t really relate to this beauty pageant issue. To me the whole thing is unwatchable and there are better ways to earn scholarships.
Great piece. Yes, the sexualization of young women happens every hour of every day. And yes, boycotting the advertisers may not make a difference. But, I’m going to do it anyway. I look around on Facebook to see if someone has started such a movement…and if not, maybe I’ll start one myself. The point is that as insistent as they are in their decisions to make a buck off the exploitation of women, we can be equally insistent. Women recently were able to get Pepsi to take down some sort of online promotion that exploited young single women as a way to drive up sales from men. The company apologized publicly. The game was over.
Here is another thing that occurs to me regarding pageants which I can’t really relate to. I think women used to participate in them pretty much for their own enjoyment and now the pageants seem to act like the girls are participating for men’s approval or enjoyment. The same goes for cheer leading. I remember the days when we would sit around with the girls and think up cheers and practice together and I am sure we sucked and we definitely weren’t hot but we were participating for our own fun not men’s approval or sexual jollies. I don’t know how the focus of two female activities got shifted to men but but it represents a sad step in the wrong direction.
Optixmom
I agree with you about the pagents. I don’t watch them because Pagents aren’t really my thing and I don’t like TV. I think this is terrible
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