Beauty, form and function

Why Miss America's 'reforms' won't find followers

The beauty pageants business has been reviled for objectifying women ever since Miss America, the world’s first swimsuit competition, was held in 1921. It is a criticism that has endured in the face of the contrarian enthusiasm of large numbers of young women to participate in these events. Now, 97 years later, the 21st century successor to Ms America has made an obligatory nod towards the #metoo movement sparked by its chairperson Gretchen Carlson and announced that it will scrap the swimsuit and evening grown segments of the show. Also, Ms Carlson, the former TV anchor who accused Fox News icon Roger Ailes of sexual harassment last year, said the show would no longer be called a pageant but a competition, and contestants would not be judged on their outward physical appearance. 

On what basis will contestants compete, in that case? Apparently, the contestants will be judged on “what comes out of their mouths,” according to Ms Carlson, from which we can assume that she means judges will test the participants on their intelligence. If this becomes the sole criterion, then the reason for holding the event becomes moot. Malala Yousafzai is unlikely to throw her hat in the ring for such a “competition” any more than Tania Sachdev, the international chess grandmaster, would. In other words, Ms America has just unwittingly declared itself redundant — though it is highly unlikely that it will lower its physical standards for contestants in the upcoming edition.

Miss America’s internal ethical and existential struggles aside, no one should read into this “reform” the demise of the global beauty pageant business. Miss America has long been struggling with its image, not to mention falling viewership, doggedly maintaining the fiction that it was a scholarship programme that “empowered” women, even as it became embarrassingly evident that no “scholars” were emerging from its winner’s list. Nor were the Ivy League colleges rushing to adopt its techniques to judge their female students. Miss America is also clearly looking for relevance within the current discourse in the West on women’s rights and for a USP to distance itself from the Miss World/Universe properties that were owned until recently by crudely sexist US President Donald Trump. 

Why have beauty pageants endured and grown into a global franchise despite the very valid condemnation of the sexism embedded in the business model? Paradoxically, part of the answer concerns the status of women in society. In many countries, including the US for most of the 20th century, the beauty pageant is regarded as a source of empowerment and livelihood. In inherently misogynist societies, the pageant holds the promise of catapulting women of ordinary abilities into lucrative modelling, acting contracts (this explains why men’s events have become a lucrative side-business) or even the prospect of meeting rich men who could bankroll their careers. This compulsion, which thrives on the sexism of mostly male audiences, is a boon for pageant organisers, who earn millions from entrance, consultancy and broadcasting fees and cuts on future contracts that the winners may get. 

Such socio-economic compulsions explain why beauty pageants have witnessed a boom in India after economic liberalisation when Sushmita Sen and Aishwarya Rai won the Miss Universe and Miss World titles in the same year. Today, every self-respecting Indian city holds a beauty contest (minus the swimsuit round in the conservative small towns) and even a Haryana medical student sees merit in putting her studies on hold to compete for the Miss World title. It is telling that over the past ten years, the overwhelming number of winners of the Big Four contests — World, Universe, International and Earth — have come from Latin America, Asia and Africa, societies where women’s rights remain weak. In Europe, outside of Russia, beauty pageants are a non-event. Miss America’s “reforms,” therefore, may presage advances in gender equality in the US, but the pageant business in the rest of the world is unlikely to emulate it anytime soon.