How do you feel about Miss America no longer being a Beauty Contest?

i really don’t give a rat’s ass about it one way or the other.

Beauty pageants aren’t suddenly bad, there has been backlash for years. I don’t really care, but my two cents is I’m fine with the pageants. I like that the swimsuit portion was eliminated. I think probably there should not be pageants for under the age of 14, but I am guilt of having watched Toddlers in Tiaras a few times, or whatever the name of that show is.

I would be all the way with you, except the beauty pageants had little to do with a healthy lifestyle for several years now. These women often have eating disorders. They use lots of tricks and products to give an illusion of beauty. Tape some places, thread around the waist to give it that trim look, Vaseline on the teeth, preparation H to tighten eye bags, and such. It has a lot to do with how much money these girls have for discretion products.

It’s cool. It was always kinda weird when the meat show kicked in.

But meat is the basis, IMO, of the Human element. Men look at women as sexual meat and women look at men as security providing, baby producing meat.
Welcome to the BBQ!

Parading that meat around on a stage while wearing high heels was really out there, man!

Women in these pageants are artificial. Head to toe. And the artificiality of it was made worse by the swimsuit show and perp walk.

I haven’t watched one of these since puberty. It was fake then and it is fake now.

Answer: who cares?

^^They aren’t artificial head to toe. I object to that characterization.

@JLeslie – OK, defend your objection.

^^Those women are people. Many of them are educated, have skills, and talents. You are making a blanket statement that they are all just pretty faces concerned only about their looks. It’s disrespectful. Who knows what these women will go on to do, I see no reason to be insulting. I’m glad they did away with the bathing suit competition. I’d like them to do away with heals over 4 inches, if I had my way, and I’d be fine if the pageants went away all together, but I think referring to people as artificial isn’t nice.

The women of Miss America have always demonstrated that they have poured their lives into great causes. Furthermore, few of them have been all THAT attractive to the extent that I saw them as ‘meat’ (or was attracted to them for romantic or sexual purposes) .

The artificialness of the heels, the fake stuff they do to look good—yeah, proud to see it go. Real beauty should be natural and healthy. It comes FROM within, but it manifests outside as well.

BTW—I am no particular fan of beauty pageants. Just find it odd that physical appearance evidently is no longer a factor. Feminine beauty is a somewhat rare gift and a talent, and I hate to see it go.

The contest has ALWAYS featured exceptional women, inside and out,. All of whom are worthy of respect.

Just like “raunchy” magazines, it has been made irrelevant by the abundant availability of free internet pornography.

@jleslie You object to “artificial” but not @kriptner calling women “meat”?

^^Meat is obviously terrible also.

The pageant is in truth a dying throwback to the age of women as trinkets. The days of drilling little girls to be beauty queens as a ticket to landing a husband are behind us. Good riddance to all the crap enforcing the dictum of women as vacuous.

Holding women (or anyone) up for physical beauty is very shallow. It is not something that one accomplishes or achieves. It is a matter of genetics. Holding and celebrating beauty in public pageants is bad for the images of your girls who may not measure up. Also, where were the beauty pageants for men? It is men who sexualize physical beauty of women. Not women. Protests about the pageants have been going on since the women’s movement first began. BTW, Trump no longer has anything to do with or owns the pageant.

Being a beauty queen does take some work. I’m happy that as a culture we are moving in the direction of valuing women for their minds, and the person they are. Yet still, in our society, the reality is, people are judged by how they look, how they carry themselves, and how they present themselves to some extent.

I am very bothered by how people make fun of “Walmart shoppers.” Those photos of people who are badly dressed or overweight. People make fun of the poor, or make fun of the mentally ill. That really bothers me. This is also a focus on outward appearance. I don’t like that people actually think it’s a negative thing that our First Lady is pretty. It shouldn’t matter if she is pretty or not.

I admit to commenting on someone who is gorgeous, or a beautiful outfit, so I see beauty too, but I like to think I don’t let it cloud getting to know the person, or making assumptions about the person. I myself can look quite out together, or like I just walked out of “Walmart”. It is very common for people to take a double take when they have only seen me with no make-up, hair in barrettes, and an old t-shirt over and over again, and then see me all glammed up. I look quite different.

Society does evaluate both men and women on how they present themselves physically, but certainly the pressure and crutusn is much harsher on women.

I saw a show once where the person featured gets a wish granted. This one girl, a young teenager, wanted to be in a beauty pageant. She was always in jeans and t-shirts, she wasn’t great at making friends, she didn’t use make-up, her hair was fairly disorderly. I’m sure most girls and boys who were her peers in school passed her over as not pretty. They brought in a pageant coach and this girl was gorgeous! Gorgeous face, beautiful body, she learned how to carry herself, she learned how to answer questions in front of an audience. I believe that helped her in many many ways. There are other ways to learn these things for sure, without parading around and being, I’ll use the word, objectified, but the pageants aren’t all bad. There are sides to it that can be positive.

It shows that females are taught through advertisements by makeup companies that to be beautiful one has to place their products on their bodies?
Unfortunately they are all been duped into following their ideas of what beauty is?
Not from a bottle!
Real beauty comes from following a healthy lifestyle and NOT buying into industry standards.
I see so much false products to add to embellish that it sickens me to see the younger girls follow like sheep to the slaughter
It has gone too far and it time for women to take control of their own healthy body.
TV commercials make a mockery of women by showing the public how much they can be controlled to purchase all their products and yes even compete for top prizes!
They have lost their dignity and their common sense and thus no wonder males take advantage of them and create competition between women ( girlfriends jealous of each other for attention).
Men play these games to garner control over their women. Don’t let them, leave the relationship if and when one’s partner tries this tactic, they are not worth keeping.

I would much rather see a girl/woman win a spelling bee or a science contest than a beauty pageant

@chyna You took my use of the word “meat” out of context.
And you didn’t comment about my using the word “meat” to describe men. That’s sexist.

No feeling whatsoever. I don’t and have never watched “beauty pageants.” I was in one in high school against my will. I was elected by my homeroom to participate and my mother made me do it. I raised two girls who never saw a beauty pageant as far as I know. I can’t imagine either of them wasting the time. I’ll say if Gretchen Carlson (a former Miss America) is now involved with the pageant, it probably has climbed a few steps on the class ladder.

@kriptiper It’s such a “meaty” area…
I honestly think we need to stop People’s Sexiest Man Alive each year.

Athletic ability also owes a lot to genetics and training and discipline.

Not everyone can be an Olympic team member or Gold Medal winner. Not everyone can be a Miss America contest winner. Physical beauty and poise is not an affront to valuing women for their minds, causes, and achievements.

I’m looking forward – a little bit, maybe, if I can get myself drunk enough – to next year’s showing of America’s Got Feminists.

Man, I would sure hate to be on the panel of judges, though.

@CWOTUS
Because of the name tag you would have to wear, accurately reading “Former Male Oppressor”?

Getting rid of the swimsuit competition does not mean it’s no longer a “beauty” pageant. It is highly unlikely anyone beyond the conventional Western standards of physical beauty will be a competitor.