The End of Miss America
Even after sections for talent and interviews were added, even after the swimsuit competition was renamed to recognize “lifestyle
and fitness” in swimwear, even after the organization swapped prizes of fur coats and screen tests for scholarships, the pageant has struggled to reconcile its search for brains with its obsession with beauty.
Gretchen Carlson, the former Fox News anchor who was Miss America 1989, was shut
out of pageant broadcasts after she refused to publicly criticize Ms. Shindle.
Ms. Carlson said she was “shocked and deeply saddened by the disgusting statements
about women attributed to the leadership” of the Miss America Organization.
For most of its life, the Miss America Pageant has been an odd hybrid.
Born in 1921 as a bathing-beauty competition with the goal of extending Atlantic City’s summer season,
at first the pageant was, literally, about the use of women’s bodies to sell a product — or a place.
Last year, the organization announced it plans to air the pageant on ABC through 2019.
Meanwhile, reality TV was eating its lunch, tempting young women with a bevy of options to win plummier prizes than the organization could offer, while competing pageants promised smaller swimsuits, higher heels,
and fewer pesky questions about how to bring about world peace.
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