{"id":3332,"date":"2018-06-08T21:05:43","date_gmt":"2018-06-09T04:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=3332"},"modified":"2018-06-08T21:05:43","modified_gmt":"2018-06-09T04:05:43","slug":"the-bikini-contest-is-over-but-we-are-living-inside-the-beauty-pageant-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=3332","title":{"rendered":"“The Bikini Contest Is Over, but We Are Living Inside the Beauty Pageant”, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bari Weiss, Opinion, Jun 5, 2018,<\/p>\n

On Tuesday morning came the news that the oldest beauty pageant in America is no longer a beauty pageant.<\/p>\n

Nearly 100 years after the first Miss America contest took place in Atlantic City \u2014 back then, the ladies wore one-pieces closer to burkinis than bikinis \u2014 the organization has said so long to the bathing suit competition<\/a>. \u201cWe are not going to judge you on your outward appearance,\u201d said Gretchen Carlson, the chairwoman of the Miss America Organization.<\/p>\n

Ms. Carlson is the perfect person to lead Miss America through this transformation. She won the crown herself in 1988 and went on to a career at Fox News, where she laid the groundwork for the #MeToo movement, blowing the whistle on Roger Ailes long before there were headlines about Harvey Weinstein.<\/p>\n

Miss America 2.0, as the event has been branded, will be \u201ca competition\u201d \u2014 not a pageant, Ms. Carlson said on \u201cGood Morning America.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re experiencing a cultural revolution in our country, with women finding the courage to stand up and have their voices heard on many issues,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Only the likes of Piers Morgan<\/a> would be opposed to a Miss America contest that promises to be more \u201cempowering\u201d and \u201cinclusive.\u201d But saying that women won\u2019t be judged for the way they look is a bit like a Miss Oklahoma or Miss Oregon saying she wishes for world peace.<\/p>\n

Getting rid of the bikini contest won\u2019t stop judges \u2014 and the rest of the world \u2014 from critiquing contestants\u2019 outer beauty. As all women know, that happens even if we are shuffling down the block in old sweats.<\/p>\n

The real reason the bikini contest was done away with is that it\u2019s simply too explicit for our euphemistic era, where \u201cstrong\u201d is the code word for skinny, and \u201chealthy\u201d for beautiful. Our culture hasn\u2019t stopped objectifying women. We \u2014 men and women both \u2014 are just getting better at pretending it\u2019s not happening. Ours is the age of Pilates and athleisure, of detoxifying and \u201cwellness,\u201d of organic and biodynamic, of game-ifying weight loss by calling calories points.<\/p>\n

Standing up on a stage in stilettos and tiny squares of nylon held up by string is just too gauche for 2018.<\/p>\n

Of course, President Trump is the crude outlier here, as he is for so many civilized norms. But far too often when I hear a man describe a woman as \u201csuper fit,\u201d my brain substitutes some variation of Mr. Trump\u2019s locker-room talk.<\/p>\n

The game is now all about discretion \u2014 of insisting you aren\u2019t working hard while you are absolutely gritting your teeth, of telling your date that you just don\u2019t like bread. While men pretend not to judge women for the way they look, we go to great lengths to pretend we don\u2019t care, either.<\/p>\n

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And so we blend leaves together and call it \u201cdelicious\u201d and \u201cjuice\u201d instead of a mealy sludge.<\/p>\n

We wear stilts to hike around concrete jungles and lie about how they are anything other than medieval torture devices.<\/p>\n

We get the tiny horns on the tips of our fingers and toes painted in shades so subtle that heterosexual men don\u2019t even realize we got them painted at all.<\/p>\n

We shell out hundreds of dollars for magic elixirs and oils the size of Theranos Nanotainers that don\u2019t even promise youth but boast that they are \u201cclean.\u201d<\/p>\n

We lie under fluorescent lights and hold our thighs open for strips of burning hot wax while we chat about the new season of \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale.\u201d<\/p>\n

We read about the beauty routines and morning routines and nighttime routines and midday routines of women infinitely more wealthy than we are and then study their social media accounts to see how we might approximate their lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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We spend hundreds of dollars on makeup that makes it look as if we aren\u2019t wearing any makeup at all.<\/p>\n

We muss our hair and pout our lips and Google \u201cbest angles\u201d and hold our cameras ever so slightly above our faces.<\/p>\n

We practice for future careers in STEM: If I burn 450 calories at Soul Cycle I can totally get away with a little sushi at lunch. Or maybe better go for the sashimi and hold out for a second glass of ros\u00e9 at dinner?<\/p>\n

We give ourselves shots in the stomach that make us want to murder everyone at the office so that one day we can become the boss of that office and have a kid alone at 50 with our frozen eggs.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, we brutally assess the facial symmetry of potential mates on dating apps without enough vowels and post pictures of ourselves that our friends have approved via group chat.<\/p>\n

We are so much more than this. But we can\u2019t help but get distracted by the whole charade. And we are the women who have the luxury of even thinking about having it all! This is what having it all looks like.<\/p>\n

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I won\u2019t miss the bikini contest a lick. I haven\u2019t watched Miss America since I was in middle school, and I was incredulous even then. The thought of growing up to be like the women on the screen never crossed my mind. It\u2019s not because I wasn\u2019t ambitious: It\u2019s that I looked at them and felt confident I was a different species. I\u2019m sure the bikinis had something to do with it.<\/p>\n

But there was also something strangely honest about it. We are being watched and scrutinized and judged. We are watching and scrutinizing and judging. It is, as Ms. Carlson said, a competition.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n