Beauty Pageants

A beauty pageant or contest is a competition manifestly based on an evaluation of contestants' appearance, and contestants are typically, although not invariably, for girls or women. There is an implicit and obvious feminist criticism of the beauty pageant, which is most often a pyramidal contest that pits one woman against another and evaluates all in a series of eliminations. Uneasy at rewarding “superficial” appearance alone, U.S. beauty pageants have claimed to also judge character and achievement, by adding evaluations of qualities or abilities like “personality,” “poise,” “character,” “intelligence,” and “talent.” Only one individual emerges victorious, but runners-up are commonly named, and sometimes other qualities of achievement, like the ability to get along with other contestants, are valorized but have no formal reward. In the United States, the Miss America Pageant has always been the premier contest. This pageant's origins are found in the first U.S. beauty contest in 1880, in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, which evolved into the venerable Atlantic City, New Jersey, contest. Atlantic City was the home of the Miss America Pageant from 1921 to 2005. In 2006, the pageant moved to Las Vegas, Nevada.

Such U.S. competitions were first promoted by entrepreneur P. T. Barnum in the mid-19th century. In addition to originating widely advertised contests that judged babies, flowers, and dogs, Barnum promoted “feminine beauty” contests. These contests appealed to the American value of competition, and they gained popularity thanks to the rise of the mass distribution newspaper and the technology of the daguerreotype. Looking back further, the origins of beauty pageantry in general can be found in the widespread European [Page 57]carnivale and in seasonal celebrations like May Day, when the Queen of the May was crowned.

Nations from Tonga to Guatemala have taken up the practice of pageants, often modeled explicitly on the Miss America Pageant. National or ethnic pageants have been used to build political solidarity through the use of a feminine body as evocative symbol. Pageants have also been used to advertise political plights, as in former Yugoslavia, where contestants held banners saying, “Please don't let us die,” or to advertise political victory, as in the contest for Miss Tibet that featured contestants of Chinese origin—in a Chinese-occupied Tibet.

Practices idealizing some women's appearance suggest, by contrast, social categories whose appearance should go unrewarded, or overlooked, or excluded from participation. Therefore, members of some social categories had, and some still have, their own pageants. For example, when African Americans were explicitly excluded from the Miss America Pageant by the infamous “Rule Seven” of the pageant handbook, contests like Miss Bronze, Miss Black America, and Miss Fine Brown Frame arose. The ineligibility of contestants with visible or stigmatizing disabilities merits no written rule. For a long time, even Americans with invisible disabilities were tacitly excluded from Miss America and many other U.S. pageants. For some such aspiring contestants, pageants like Miss Deaf America and Ms. Wheelchair America existed.

Twentieth- and 21st-century beauty queens are the ostensible “queens,” “princesses,” “courtiers” or the “Miss,” “Ms.,” or “Mrs.” governing and representing very different kinds of realms. Their rule is described as extending over specific events (e.g., a state fair or a race like the Indianapolis 500), geographical regions (e.g., city, region, nation, world, or universe), brands of commercial products (e.g., Miss Budweiser), special constituencies (e.g., Miss Black Deaf America), and farmers' or other workers' associations (e.g., Dairy Queen). No matter what social category is being contested, most beauty contests are expressly for girls and women, and most require of them something that is not required of boys and men who are in the same social category, namely, demonstrable good character and sexual inexperience or, for married contests, at least modesty and concentration on maternity and good works. In this way, it is unsurprising that the rules for entering many contests, like the Miss Black America pageant, specify that not only should a contestant not be married or have children, but she must never have been married or pregnant; while she may have been convicted of a minor traffic violation, she may not have been convicted of any other crime or misdemeanor. Likewise, Miss Deaf America's talent contributions will “help us elevate the image and self-concept of deaf ladies throughout the United States.” Contestants thereby uphold the respectable character of the entire social category.

...