Miss America Destroyed and the War on Physical Fitness
You might have heard that Miss America pageant has dropped the swimsuit and evening gown section. They have reinvented Miss America and are calling it Miss America 2.0. In this article I am going to discuss why this is a bad idea, especially from the point of view of fitness industry.
In an interview the current chairwoman of Miss America Gretchen Carlson mentioned that, “we are no longer judging our candidates on their outward physical appearance”. Gretchen Carlson said that, “it is much more important to look at somebody and talk about their goals and achievements in life and how we can teach them leadership skills and really celebrate their talent”. So what is replacing the swimsuit section? They said “it will be a live interactive session with judges where the contestants will talk about their achievements, goals and how they will use their Miss America title to improve the world”. As for the evening gown session, the contestant now is free to wear whatever she is comfortable with such as a pantsuit.
I have never seen a pageant and probably never will, so this change does not really affect my life. They want to become a scholarly organization that is fine with me. I am not really sure though how this will affect their viewership. People and this includes both men and women, really liked watching the swimsuit and evening gown session. Now if they will remove these sections then people might lose interest and focus more on other pageants such as Miss USA. The sad part is that they will blame the failure on the oppressive patriarchal society, while not realizing the real issue here will be that the show will no longer be entertaining.
Miss America’s viewership ratings go down or up, either way I don’t really care. The issue I have is with the thought behind these changes. Miss America was a beauty pageant, which means it used to celebrate a woman’s beauty. Of course the beauty is both internal and external, and that is why the pageant used to celebrate them both. It now appears that they do not really want to celebrate a woman’s external beauty. As if a woman’s physical beauty is something offensive and that people who focus on external beauty are shallow and stupid.
Do they not realize how much discipline and commitment it takes to stay in shape. It takes a lot of will power to regularly go to the gym, workout and eat clean. That is the reason why most people are unfit. If you look at the swimsuit photos of all the contestants in the Miss America pageant, you clearly notice that these girls are physically fit and I don’t mean to say they are skinny or thin, they look healthy and strong. I don’t think any of them starve themselves; they all must be eating good nourishing food. Such level of fitness requires toughness and dedication. Without even knowing them personally you can be sure that these girls are hard working and disciplined. These are the very traits of people who get stuff done. Now compare that with an interactive session where you talk with judges about how you will use your title to better the world. Sure you can come up with politically correct statements to display your inner beauty, but the thing is, how can anyone hold you accountable to that. It can be all fluff with no substance. We should not devalue external beauty, it is not free, people have to work very hard and make sacrifices to attain it and we should celebrate that.
This brings me to the very common statement that people make in the media and in the movies, “your appearance is not important, it is what is inside you that matters”. The statement may sound great on surface, the reality is, our appearance matters a lot. It has been proven again and again by psychological studies. People with better looks are always perceived as more competent, intelligent and earn more money. This is true for both men and women. Some people consider this injustice, but lets not be quick to come to any conclusion. There is a reason why we find some people more attractive than others and it is very much related to what is inside you. If you are happy and confident you instantly become more attractive. Also we should not forget that beauty is directly correlated with health and your health depends a lot on how you take care of yourself. There is also scientific evidence that intelligence increases your attractiveness. So we should not be very quick in dismissing outward appearance, we are very good at identifying what is inside you from your outward appearance. That is how we have been judging people for ages and it works most of the time.
And here is my biggest objection to all of this. I see this trend these days where people have started to outwardly tell others to love their body at any size. You can listen to a Tedx talk by Victoria Welsby in which she imagines a world where fat, or in a more layman terms, unhealthy bodies were not only accepted but cherished. Its people like these to whom Miss America is caving in. There is a reason why we find certain types of bodies attractive and not the others. A fit person has worked hard to stay fit, it does not take much effort to be fat. Therefore a fat person is perceived as lazy and nobody is attracted to a lazy person. I also understand that many people get fat even when they try their best not to. But these people have some sort of disease. It is not a good idea to mate with an unhealthy person and therefore we are not attracted to fat person.
One final point before I wrap this all up. Some people point out that such swimsuit competitions objectify women as objects and nobody takes them seriously. Infact this Miss America decision has come after the former CEO of Miss America resigned because some of his emails were leaked which had sexual and violent content. The election of Trump and the recent #metoo movement appears to have also played a role in it. This in my opinion is the most reasonable argument for this decision. Here is the thing though; a lot of women like to show off their bodies, especially when they have worked so hard to attain it. Many women do not think that they are perceived as objects in bikinis and in fact enjoy posing in bikini. One can argue that it will be injustice to deprive such women from expressing themselves. We should not shame such women. An regarding the scholarships, if a woman is just interested in academics and does not want to pose in a swimsuit then she has numerous other options. She is not forced to participate in Miss America.
Through out history we have celebrated a man’s strength and a woman’s beauty. Everybody enjoys appreciating the beauty of a woman and strength of muscular men. I see nothing wrong in celebrating outward physical appearance. It gives motivation to others to take care of their body and be the best version of themselves. The only people who will be offended by this are the ones who do not have the strength and the drive to strive to be the best version of themselves. According to me Miss America must be a well-rounded person who is intelligent and physically fit. These two things are not mutually exclusive. A person can be intelligent as well as good looking at the same time. We should celebrate both the mind and the body, because for a fulfilling life we need both.
Originally published at www.kaa-yaa.com.
