Thoughts on the Miss America pageant 86ing the swimsuit competition

I don't know that it's time to call it a trend yet, but I've seen two examples this afternoon of disagreements on the Right about the Miss America pageant nixing the swimsuit competition.

Kristin Soltis Anderson at the Washington Examiner, for instance, is on one side of the issue and cites Ben Shapiro as an example of someone on the other side.

Many conservatives I admire greatly have bemoaned the shift as capitulation to the feminist Left. Ben Shapiro of Daily Wire tweeted "Congratulations to the 2018 Miss America Winner, Madeleine Albright!"

I believe my brothers-in-arms are mistaken to decry this change. You don't have to be a leftist women's studies professor to think there's something bizarre about asking young women to glue on a bathing suit bottom in order to effectively demonstrate confidence and poise and win scholarship money.

Then there are two views juxtaposed for all intents and purposes side by side at The Stream.

This one comes from John Zmirak:

So the Miss America pageant won’t be a beauty contest anymore. It will be a “competition.” (Like Survivor, maybe?) No more parading in swimsuits, or presumably in ball gowns. How will the women dress? Maybe as one of the things we’re now training our daughters to be, instead of brides and moms. So we can look forward to:

• The “Corporate Shark” competition, where the women all dress as slightly bumpier men. Some will display cleavage, but judges can be subject to legal action for noticing.
• The “Diversity Enforcer” competition. Wearing shapeless dashikis, ponchos, and mu-mus, they will score points for “unsettling, thousand-yard stares,” “menacing smiles,” and “smug, faux-compassionate brow-furrows.”
• The “Social Sciences/ Humanities Academic Feminist” event. Dressed in fabulously frumpy tweeds, they will compete in Improvisational Intersectionalism. Judges will throw them recent tragedies, from natural disasters to isolated suicides in Burma. Contestants will compete in explaining how the white/male/heterosexist patriarchy is to blame. Bonus points for polysyllabic neologisms and incomprehensibility.
• The “Shrill, Progressive Religion” category. Judges will pick random verses from the Old or New Testament, and contestants must draw from them detailed policy mandates for dealing with immigration, welfare spending, or U.S. foreign policy exactly as God demands.

Burqas Aren’t Modest.

I’ve seen a few Christians (some of them clergy) welcome the change in the pageant. Presumably they welcome the de-emphasis on beauty, and the end of the swimsuit competition because it’s premised on lust. Or something. This is a mistake. It’s as grave an error as thinking that Muslim “modesty” (as evidenced by burqas and honor-killings) is somehow akin to Christian chastity.

Now, if Miss America had ever had a “Sexy Lingerie” competition, I would agree with suppressing that. But swimsuits, by definition, are public attire. The few times I flipped channels and caught a glimpse of the swimsuit competition, most of the costumes were a lot less risqué than you’d see on any beach. Let’s not even mention the Internet. So no, I wouldn’t want men with sex addictions or vowed to celibacy watching this competition, but they’re really not relevant to anyone else.

He makes a pretty compelling case for respecting the way God make the world:

Part of how God made men is intensely visual. We respond to women’s beauty, of face and limb and hair. And wouldn’t you know it, normal women want to be seen that way. Sometimes they compete with each other as to who is most beautiful — just as men compete to show who is physically bravest. Now, physical courage can sometimes be important for women. And men care about their looks. But not to the same degree. That’s not how we’re made. That’s part of our God-given natures. If that offends you, I’m terribly sorry.

So attacking the idea of beauty pageants is right up there with attacking masculine chivalry. With flooding our combat military with women — whom we train our soldiers to value no more highly than male comrades. We must take our young warriors and beat out of them the primal sense that women are uniquely worth protecting. Almost as if — just work with me here — only women could carry children, so they’re the future of our kith and kin. Such religiously motivated crazy-talk. Good thing we now have Science. 

Fellow Stream writer (should we take the time to discuss the implications of using this term to depict a colleague?) Liberty McArtor takes exception to his stance:

My Stream colleague John Zmirak isn’t joining me in celebrating. He warns these changes “are exactly like those that just happened to the Boy Scouts,” which is now accepting girls. In other words, a rejection of what the thing’s all about. 

John argues that “Attacking the idea of beauty pageants is right up there with attacking masculine chivalry.” But I think he’s wrong. 

She takes on his argument that I've excerpted above:

Yes, God made men to be attracted to women’s beauty, and women generally like that fact. But women don’t want to be seen that way all the time, by everyone. As a single young woman, I wanted single, attractive young men to think I was beautiful. Now, I primarily want my husband to think I’m beautiful.

People whose opinion of my looks I never cared about? Teachers, bosses, male colleagues, and the people determining whether I’d get into college and whether I’d get a scholarship. I wanted them to see my talent. My intelligence. My potential as a future student or colleague. As a Christian, I want them to see Christ.

I wanted them to see what I’d worked hard to achieve, not the symmetry of my face or the proportions of my figure. 

I guess the first thing to notice is that in both cases cited here, the guy thinks it's a sop to the Left and the lady thinks it's a positive development.

There is, of course, the level from which we could dive into this that takes a look at all the ways in which beauty is baked into how men, but also other women, do and have always taken stock of someone who is female. It may be less commonplace now, but there was a time when a public introduction of a women at an event went along the lines of "the lovely Miss / Mrs. So-and-so." Obviously, cosmetics and hairstyling are huge industries. Hardcore feminists who go on television don't do so without the application of a little makeup. Most reportage of celebrity orgies of self-congratulation consist of gushing about gowns and hairstyles. A major moment in a wedding ceremony is when those in attendance all turn to watch the bride begin her procession down the aisle.

I do find myself considering that Zmirak's conflating of this development with the gay-ing of the Boy Scouts may be a little off. That has to do with an aberration within one gender and doesn't really have a lot to do with this matter of how all of society regards one of the two genders.

Which may make a nice segue into a point that may either strike one as strange or as a "well-duh" observation.

Let's look at the whole journalistic sequestering of females from the perspective that maybe it's strange. It was within this writer's memory that newspapers (you know, those big, crinkly things your uncle used to hold in front of his face while seated at the breakfast table?) had a women's section, along with international news, business and financial news, sports news, and a bit of space devoted to entertainment. (I don't know how commonplace it is or isn't, but my local newspaper still gives out a Woman of the Year Award, and it's always for civic involvement of the support-the-arts-and-those-in-need variety. This strikes me as a little patronizing, as in "bless the little lady's heart, she's using all that spare time that women have to care." ) Why this setting apart of a particular kind of information-dispensing and recognition for one gender? We may have seen that particular phenomenon fade a bit, but there is no doubt that any magazine or website devoted to concerns such as dating, relationships, health, parenting and stress reduction is counting on an overwhelmingly female readership.

Now, is it really so strange? Think about it. Are you sure? Does a guy who is, say, a skilled tradesman - electrician, plumber, sheet metal specialist - or a CEO of a manufacturing company, or the chief of police in a gritty metropolis, take the time to read much if any of that kind of stuff?

The point here is that whether we squirm or shrug at acknowledging it, we include loveliness in the admirable qualities of any woman we take into consideration. We've also always had some sense of certain aspects of human life as being women's terrain.

 The idea that there ought to be a contest to crown a woman as the emblem of all that is laudable about our nation, based on qualities ranging from the above-discussed physical attributes to poise to various talents is arguably past its shelf life. Then again, maybe it's so deeply ingrained in what both men and women are that it's as relevant as ever. I've never looked into it, but surely there are feminist tracts delving into this.

Should I weigh in on one side or the other of the bathing-suit issue? It's probably time for that to go.

But mark my word, not all the gender-bender jackboots in the world such as those discussed in the previous post, can permanently obscure the plain fact that each of the two genders has definitely intrinsic qualities that will manifest themselves one way or another.