The Miss USA pageant is scheduled to be televised live tonight, and yes, I am excited, and no, I am not ashamed. Beauty pageants have experienced a considerable drop in popularity, mainly due to the fact that most sane people (who subscribe to The New Yorker) are too embarrassed to endorse such a blatant display of female exploitation. However, I love it. I am pro-exploitation.
This year’s Miss USA has the additional lure of scandal – lots and lots of delicious scandal. According to CNN, last year’s Miss USA Tara Conner almost had her crown yanked at the suggestion that she was boozing it up too hard in New York clubs. Other contestants who haven’t had the easiest year: Miss USA Nevada, who lost her title after racy pictures of her were found on the Internet, and Miss USA New Jersey, who got knocked up. Contest rules state that contestants must not have ever been married, nor given birth. That’s why it’s titled “Miss” and not “Missus.”
I love the Miss USA pageant because, as a young American woman, it spectacularly illustrates the conundrum that we face in our increasingly monomaniacal nation. Contestants must sign “moral” contracts and cannot exit the hotel without a chaperone for the duration of the contest; they must also parade about in the altogether for a national televised audience. Paradox, anyone?
