Even with the best will, you can’t reform beauty contests – they just need to disappearThe bikini ban brought in by the Miss America contest manages to feel both welcome and absurd. The all-female organisers of the 97-year-old pageant are responding to #MeToo by ditching the swimwear round (four years after Miss World got rid of it). It’s being replaced by an “interactive section” where contestants explain their achievements and goals. They can also wear “whatever they want” in the eveningwear round and there will be “all female shapes and sizes”. Miss America wants to stop being viewed as a pageant, more as a competition that helps smart young women pay for college. Which sounds workable – just get back to us when the contestants are allowed to wear paper bags on their heads.There’s been a backlash to the ban from former contestants and what one could only assume to be time-travellers from 1972, who strongly feel that women should have the right to express their inner beauty, academic brilliance and profound insights on environmental issues via the medium of the string bikini. While those running Miss America should be applauded for ignoring the naysayers, what about the biggest, most female-positive change of all – stopping Miss America altogether? In fact, ditching all beauty pageants? And I include those creepy ones where eight-year-old girls are tarted up to resemble the death masks of meth-addicted Baby Janes. Continue reading…

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/09/its-not-just-bikini-parades-that-have-had-their-day-so-has-miss-america