NBC<\/a> that \u201cthe wellbeing of all individuals associated with Miss USA is my top priority\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cAll along, my personal goal as the head of this organization has been to inspire women to always create new dreams, have the courage to explore it all, and continue to preserve integrity along the way,\u201d she said. \u201cI hold myself to these same high standards and I take these allegations seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Hilary Levey Friedman, author of Here She is, a history of the US beauty pageant, the controversy at Miss USA is \u201cunprecedented\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNo Miss USA since 1952 has ever resigned before, and the only other national title holder who ever resigned before was Vanessa Williams.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Williams, who won \u201cpreliminary swimsuit\u201d and \u201cpreliminary talent\u201d (for a vocal performance of Happy Days Are Here Again), was crowned Miss America in 1984, becoming the first African American woman to hold the title. She was forced to resign months later over the unauthorized publication of nude photographs in Penthouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friedman points out that controversies have been on the increase. In 2022, days after R\u2019Bonney Gabriel was crowned Miss USA after winning Miss Universe, some contestants publicly accused competition organizers of rigging the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
An investigation was launched and the Miss Universe organization suspended Miss USA president Crystle Steward, who had herself held the Texas, USA and universe titles in 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Friedman, who argues in her book that beauty pageants often reflect the arc of feminism, said the current controversy should be see in that context. \u201cThe current wave of feminism is about women organising and using their voices, particularly talking about mental health, harassment, [and] workplace conditions generally, so it\u2019s not surprising we should see this in pageants.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the tumult is not limited to Miss USA\/Universe. In 2018, the Miss America pageant eliminated the swimsuit competition to focus on being more inclusive of women of all sizes, and to judge contestants on inner rather than outer beauty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Winner Cara Mund later complained she\u2019d been \u201cbullied, manipulated and silenced\u201d by the pageant\u2019s leadership, including former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989, who\u2019d been instrumental in forcing the resignation of Fox News chairman Roger Ailes amid multiple claims of sexual harassment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mund said Carlson, the chairwoman, and CEO Regina Hopper had made her life \u201cmiserable\u201d. Her speech, she said, had been cut to 30 seconds, and she was told that a dress she had been approved to wear in the traditional \u201cshow us your shoes\u201d parade could not be worn. The two women, she added, had \u201csystematically silenced me, reduced me, marginalized me, and essentially erased me in my role as Miss America in subtle and not-so-subtle ways on a daily basis\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the current set of pageant scandals are intra-women, it has not always been that way. Friedman devotes a section of her book \u2013 Tabloids, Trump, Tits \u2013 to the era when Donald Trump owned the Miss USA franchise from 1996 to 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The former president is said to have met his second wife Marla Maples when she was Miss Hawaiian Tropic, and he liked to hang backstage with contestants because, he said, he \u201cowned it\u201d. At least three of \u201chis\u201d beauty queens lived in Trump Tower. According to Friedman, Trump is a \u201ccentral figure linking pageantry, politics, and feminism\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the former US president\u2019s more memorable contributions was when, in 1996, he tried to put Miss Venezuela, Miss Universe Alicia Machado on a diet, and complained she was an \u201ceating machine\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOne of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest \u2013 he loves beauty contests, supporting them, and hanging around them \u2013 and he called this woman \u2018Miss Piggy\u2019, and then he called her \u2018Miss Housekeeping\u2019 because she was Latina,\u201d Machado later recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Friedman, the controversies are indicative of a broader shift in America that embraces women\u2019s rights. She said: \u201cYoung women are seeing in the wake of the women\u2019s march in the US, [and] the MeToo and Time\u2019s Up movements, that they can organize, use their voices, and don\u2019t have to tolerate anything they view as workplace harassment and abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Friedman also argues that the picture is somewhat nuanced. In the 1940s, Miss America added a scholarship at a time when women largely were not seeking higher education or given the opportunity to fund it. \u201cFor some people this is a tool of social mobility,\u201d she points out, \u201cand for some people it is empowering.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf women want to say, this is empowering for me, and a great way to use my voice, speak out and be part of my community, and it works for them, then we shouldn\u2019t cut off an opportunity just because it\u2019s not our choice,\u201d Friedman said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Objectively, Friedman said, people are not paying as much attention to staged beauty pageants as they once did, but that doesn\u2019t mean we aren\u2019t watching \u2013 we\u2019re now doing it in other ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Bachelor is extremely popular, and has a major element of a beauty pageant every episode. Instagram, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition still comes out, the Victoria\u2019s Secret fashion has come back, the Met Gala,\u201d she said. \u201cEspecially with rise of reality TV and social media influencers \u2013 they have just changed form.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
theguardian<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US beauty pageant industry, in a concise summation made last week, is \u201csuch a hot mess\u201d. Two reigning beauty queens have stepped down in as many weeks, and there may be more turbulence to come to an area of showbusiness that promotes a sheen of perfection \u2013 at least among its contestants \u2013 but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":27428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5782],"tags":[23216,7212,28498,21836,7210,28499,21056],"class_list":["post-27427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ep","tag-beauty-pageant","tag-champion","tag-laurel","tag-miss","tag-quit","tag-show-business","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27429,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27427\/revisions\/27429"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}