Recently I read an article by a Florida State student titled "Why The Miss America Organization Is Losing Our Respect." This article claims that the Miss America Pageant shapes unrealistic body types for women and is no longer a talent-based contest.
The body issues surrounding the Miss America Pageant are not strictly related to this pageant, or any one source. It is a trend all over the country. In my opinion, the media and fashion industries have much more to do with women's body image issues than any other field.
Now for the talent. Below, are the talent portions from the last three years of Miss America Pageants.
2014: Miss New York, Nina Davuluri, performs a Bollywood dance.
2015: Miss New York, Kira Kazantsev, performs "Happy," by Pharrel Williams.
2016: Miss Colorado, Kelly Johnson, performs an original monologue about her job as a nurse.
The writer of this article claims that for these talents to belong to winners and runners up of the Miss America Pageant, that it must be becoming more un-American than it has ever been before, and that this pageant isn't the same as it was 15 years ago. Two of the examples she gives of "true deservers" of the crown were Katie Stam and Ericka Dunlap, both of whom sang as their talent, much like Kira Kazantsev. These women all embody the beauty, grace, and intelligence that the Miss America Organization was founded upon. To say that a complicated Bollywood routine is not a challenging talent, or a vocal routine is no more than sitting barefoot on the ground playing with a cup, and giving a heartfelt story about her passion of helping people as a nurse is no more getting up and telling a story about something she did, is just sad.
In my opinion, the writer of this criticism was angry that Miss Florida 2015, Mary Katherine Fetchel, was not crowned Miss America 2016. There is nothing wrong with being upset that the representative of your home state does not win. But to take that frustration out on the organization, as a whole and the very deserving winners, is just not acceptable. Every contestant that makes it to the Miss America Pageant has many wonderful attributes and so much to offer the title; they would not be there if they didn't.
