Miss America Master Race

Guilty Pleasure: watching beauty pageants.

It is something my mom and I have always done. We each try to select the winner and compare our notes with each elimination.

Miss America is on tonight :)

Clarification, I watch; I do not "do" pageants. I may be a Southern Belle but I am quite klutzy and the one time I took part in a pageant in high school, my goal was simply not to fall ;)

I realize there is not a huge focus on intellectual aspects (I am from SC, remember Miss Teen USA 2007!?!) and they show off the women's bodies more than I would like, but... old habits die hard.

One of my favorite parts of the show is always the Evening Gown section. I was pleased this year that the dresses were fairly classy and didn't show too much skin.

One terrible thing I've noticed though (note: I am aware the whole concept of pageants, i.e. breeding female competition, focusing on looks/body image, materialism, the fact that it is not done for males, etc. is not fantastic BUT this blog post is in reference to this particular pageant, on this evening, not pageants in general) is the lack of skin color variation.

Every single person on the stage - host Mario Lopez included - are the same tan/light brown color. You can't really tell who is what ethnicity. The black girls are really pale; the white girls are bronzed beyond belief, and the asian/hawaian women blend in somewhere in between...

I suppose it is a true representation of the "melting pot" cause all the separate identities blended together and they all look as though they could be sisters - all the same Miss America Color.

Strange. Striking. Sad.


That is all.