A recent Miss America1 is performing at my workplace all week, which has me thinking about a topic I usually don’t think about: beautiful women. I’ve gotta say: I just don’t get it.
Having seen someone who is Officially One Of The Most Beautiful Woman In The USA up close, I can report that she’s pretty. But I see don’t see anything that makes her prettier than other thin women with clear skin, big eyes and even features.2 Yet this person was officially certified the beautifulist of all (at least, among women). It this one of those things you have to be an expert on to be able to tell the difference?
(She can really sing, by the way.)
[Crossposted at Creative Destruction, where we all parade in gowns 24-7.]
- Katie Harmon, surgeon in training, classical singer, and proud Republican. [↩]
- “Thin, clear skin, big eyes and even features” seems to me to be the basic requirements of being conventionally pretty in our culture, for men and women. Edited to add: Actually, I guess big eyes aren’t manditory for men; David Boreanaz, for example, is considered unusually good-looking, but his eyes are if anything on the small side. [↩]
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This is the most sexist thing I’ve ever seen you write.
I don’t mean that to be insulting; I think you’ve honestly just missed the boat.
You yourself write: she’s a surgeon in training, a classical singer of great talent, politically active in positive causes. She’s clearly one hell of a human being. So she’s named Miss America – emblematic of the nation’s idealized womanhood. Hokey and distressingly pre-ironic, and absolutely dripping in the patriarchy, yes, but idealized and role-modeled nonetheless.
And this you reduce to being anointed as the most beautifulest? I can think of a dozen women who are more physically attractive than this lady, as pretty as she is, just in my circle of visibility here in Colorado Springs. I don’t know many surgeon-singer-activists.
The fact that she’s pretty isn’t the point.
Robert, then why is it called a “beauty competition” and why does a surgeon-singer-political activist need to parade around in a swimsuit and heels in front of a panel of judges? Would the same surgeon-singer-activist have won if she was 50 years old, had acne and weighed 160 lbs?
Robert, it is you that are missing the point.
If she weren’t pretty, within the context of the Miss America pagent, the fact that she’s a medical student, vocalist and is politically active wouldn’t matter at all.
She wouldn’t be Miss America if she weren’t pretty.
She could still be intelligent and skilled enough to be a surgeon and sing well, she could still be proud of her political affiliation, but no one would know who she was if she weren’t also conventionally pretty, and she hadn’t chosen to promote herself through the vehicle of her beauty.
Miss America sells and promotes conventional beauty, as well as intelligence and skill, not to mention the will to succeed. The pagent is a contest to see who can be the most talented, smart, pretty and driven all in one person. But most importantly, the Miss America pagent is a contest to see who can be all these things, and uphold the status quo. If the contestant hadn’t decided very early in her career that she didn’t want to tow the line, on at the least the surface level, then she would not be a contestant.
Ampersand, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and hope you knew but didn’t know that you knew about all this. If not, I’m sure there’s a lot more literature out there.
Amp
Please understand I greatly appreciate your site for your opinions on gender. That said I will have to say I see a large blind spot. I am a right leaning libertarian. I struggle with the lens of ideology. It is so easy to allow your political affiliations to color your thinking. I am not saying this as a slam but as someone who says I see it myself also.
If it were based on direct physical attributes I would say I can see your point. But beauty in the end is about racial survivability not individual survivability. The fact that Miss America is pretty could also leave me flat. However her aspiring proffession of surgeon indicates not only intellegence of a kind but also discipline and determination. Her political affiliation can be due to so many different reasons. I appreciate strong women, I personally like attractive women but work not to let this color my proffesional behaviour.
Personally when it comes to women and gender I feel women need our support however sometimes we men can be drawn subtlely into internal spats and jelousies. Women do such a good job of destroying each other and we as men have a duty to whenever possible stay above this fray.
I actually don’t think that Miss America is supposed to be about finding the Most Beautiful Women in the USA. There are other beauty pageants that do that, but that’s never been Miss America’s schtick. Miss America is about finding the most perfect example of American femininity, which is a slightly different thing. It’s important to be pretty and thin, but it’s also important to be wholesome and chaste and accomplished and well-spoken and patriotic and God-fearing and all sorts of other things, several of which are pretty sexist but which can’t be reduced to beauty. Miss Americas tend to be more cute than beautiful, actually.
It seems to me that the underlying thing is the mania for contests, competition and commercialism.
Thus, I find Miss America Contests slightly irritating. Besides, the winners are all too skinny in my opinion.
And the contestants try to be so nauseatingly laudable and conventional. The thing isn’t really sexist, as the whole thing is scripted for women. I haven’t heard a man say any thing positive about Miss America in years. I never watch the contest but I would if they added a little fun instead of the forced earnestness of it. How about adding a hot dog eating contest and dropping the “talent” and public speaking contests.
There are very few people with “thin, clear skin, big eyes and even features, ” that’s part of the reason that we find that combination so attractive: there aren’t too many people that measure up to it. Models are emulated because there aren’t too many 5’10 women walking around who weigh 135lbs and to boot have thin, clear skin, and big eyes.
This woman is Miss America because she represents what many people find to be beautiful and she is also more talented than the vast majority of folks. I don’t know too many would-be surgeons, with a beautiful singing voice, who also understand economics ( who knows? She might actually be a libertarian but is registered as a Republican).
Lala, Eva, etc. – no, of course she wouldn’t be there if she was fat or ugly. Being conventionally pretty is the price of admission to the pageant.
But having gotten into the pageant, she’s not being judged primarily on her looks. How could she be? All the women in the population are good-looking in a conventional sense; as Amp notes, it must take an expert to determine the gradations.
Amp’s error is in his assumption that those gradations are the only factors in the final decision. In fact, while relative prettiness does have some role in the pageant, the decisive (because much more differentiated) judging factors are things like talent, interpersonal charisma, and cultural/political activism.
I think Sally hit the nail on the head. Miss America doesn’t have to be the most beautiful woman in the US, but she has to be the most shining example of American femininity. She has to be a part of the national(ist) narrative – the story that Americans tell themselves about their country and why it’s so much better than all other countries. And clearly this woman fits the bill for the US at this moment in time.
To address your other point, beauty is weird, and having found myself in the company of several certifiably beautiful people this week (models), I have been left scratching my head at their so-called physical appeal.
Oh, give me a break. Everyone is an expert on women’s relative loveliness. We’re talking about an event in which women don bikinis; parade down a runway in high heels; stop in front of judges; pause, turn, pause again so the judges can get a good look at them from several angles; and then receive numerical ratings on their “physical fitness in a swimsuit,” which are averaged and factored into their final score. Then they do the same thing in a figure-clinging evening gown. It’s true that amp’s question stemmed from the fact that he doesn’t know much about beauty pageants, which is pretty understandable considering that he’s not the target audience in any way, but you’re buying into the fundamentally stupid argument that Miss America really is a “scholarship competition.” If it were really about poise and eloquence, nobody would need to see the contestants in the least amount of clothing one can wear in our society without it being considered actively obscene. And you know, I can’t remember the last time that the woman who gave the smartest and most thoughtful interview answers won. I always root for that woman, which is why my favorite usually ends up second runner-up. The judges aren’t looking for smart and thoughtful. They’re looking for appropriate and cute and reasonably impressive on paper, plus really defined abs and a pert little butt.
(Um, yes, I watch Miss America every year. A couple of friends and I have an annual Miss America viewing party. Go ahead and revoke my feminist credentials. I’m not proud of my abiding love of crazy, tacky, over-the-top patriarchal spectacle.)
The most interesting thing about Miss America, though, is that it’s in serious trouble. Nobody watches it anymore. Nobody is interested in finding America’s most wholesome and cute girl-next-door type. It’s not even shown on network television these days. Young women would much rather watch America’s Next Top Model than Miss America. I don’t know what to make of that, but clearly there’s something interesting going on.
As long as y’all make fun of it, I think your credentials are safe. :-P
Thanks for the info about what the tournament is really about.
I think you’re right. But I don’t know what it is. One obvious difference is that (some) models are genuine celebrities, whereas — at least in my crowd — I think no one knows who the current Miss America is.
SmartBlkWoman, I just don’t think the combination is that unusual, at least not to my eyes. Go to any protest rally or beach and there are a lot of conventionally pretty people, in my experience.
And not to take away anything from Ms. Harmon — who I assume is very smart and talented and driven — but a surprising number of surgeons are also good musicians (my workplace had a charity concert featuring surgeon musicians just last month). My guess is that both surgery and music are fields in which good math/abstract thinking skills, and excellent work discipline, are extremely useful, so it’s natural for there to be some crossover.
If it were really about poise and eloquence, nobody would need to see the contestants in the least amount of clothing one can wear in our society without it being considered actively obscene.
Well, yeah. And if was really about beauty and attractiveness, nobody would need to see the interviews and the talent portion. It’s obviously about both of those things.
Equally obviously, the judging decisions are ending up being made largely on the basis of the areas where these women have big differences, rather than tiny ones. The judging algorithm is public; about 50% of the points come from looks, and about 50% come from talent and interviews and activism. Since they’re all about equally pretty, but have widely ranging talents and activism, it’s obvious to me where the decision has to be made. Your cognitive mileage may vary.
My point is a very narrow one: I’m not arguing that the pageant is a triumph of feminist virtue, or even that it’s worth watching. I’m arguing that it’s sexist for Amp to assume that the winner of the pageant is simply the prettiest woman, when there’s a big heap of evidence indicating that talent and character are also big parts of the picture. Amp’s view wouldn’t be sexist if the pageant was filled with a wide physical variety of women, and the prettiest ones always seemed to win; it’s sexist because the pageant is filled with a narrow physical variety of women, and he’s ignoring the non-sexy components of the selection.
To analogize it to a real-world experience that we might all have more first-hand knowledge of, what if a hospital in your town hired a gorgeous woman to be its chief of surgery, and my immediate reaction was “I bet they hired her because she has great knockers” ?
I mean, maybe I’m RIGHT – maybe that is why they hired her. But in pre-emptively foreclosing the possibility that they hired her because she was the best surgeon or the best administrator, I’m declining to see her as a complete human being. Saying “Her skills are awesome, but I wonder if the people making hiring the decision were influenced more by her good looks than her good abilities” would be a legitimate inquiry; saying “I bet she got the job because of the jugs” would not be. Amp’s post is basically asking “how come this woman’s jugs are considered better than everybody else’s” and denying the possibility that her jugs might not be the deciding factor.
Or so it seems to me.
Amp,
I rarely see women that look like they could be models ( I’m not talking about your average women of exceptional beauty, but a supermodel or a model good enough to make a living at it); these women are exceedingly rare to find. I think something like only 1% of models are good (i.e. beautiful enough) to make a living at it. The world is full of very pretty people like you said, but very few of them would be deemed exceptional looking.
I agree with you about doctors being incredibly talented and driven and that this talent and drive carries over into other areas of their lives too, such as music.
Sally:
Is there a drinking game involved ? I can’t rest until I know.
America’s Next Top Model…here’s what I think about more teenage girls being interested in it…
The Miss America contest is regimented, over-performed and ultimately, old fashioned.
As with many “reality” tv shows, the top model show mixes up the contest with unrehearsed air time. When I have the opportunity, I am utterly sucked into this type of television show…can’t wait to find out what happens next.
I have a 20 year old tv set I use for watching videos and dvds, because if I had a new tv with cable or equivalent access I’d do very little else when at home.
Hopefully, most people aren’t as susceptible to tv-suck as I am, but my point is that watching the filmed and edited moments of photogenically vulnerable people is utterly riveting, whatever the subject matter. A model contest? The ultimate in voyeuristic appreciation of narcissism. Plus, there’s a lot less of the intelligence/skill ambiguity involved in the mix.
i agree that being judged on physical beauty in addition to intelligence, compassion, and talent is superfluous at best and demeaning and objectifying at worst. but surely the mere existence of such a competition plays into our hyper-competitive culture, leading to beauty pageants for younger and younger kids.
we’ve all seen the pictures of 5-year-olds dolled up with hair extensions, make-up and what would be a revealing outfit if 5-year-olds had anything to reveal. and i’m sure we’ve all thought approximately the same thing: “ummm, that ain’t right. all kids are cute, and they don’t have to try to be sex objects to do it.”
sure, i have as much appreciation for women’s physical beauty as the next straight guy. and i’m sure most if not all commenters on this blog have the ability to separate that appreciation from day-to-day judgements about a person’s worth to society (in favor of truly worthwhile traits like intelligence, compassion, and talent). but it’s not us we have to worry about; it’s the little girls who grow up believing they have to be pretty, because look at all the attention little tiffani is getting by being part of the pageant, and they want attention, too, and if tiffani can win, why not them?
it’s not that it’s bad if we think miss america is beautiful. rather, it’s bad that we if that there’s any societal benefit to fostering a competition that judges that beauty in comparison to other women. must everything be a competition? would society truly be better off if everyone were beautiful, and not “just” healthy? what if the standard of beauty is actually unheatlthy?
i think it’s the competitive aspect of it that forms part of amp’s confusion. he can feel free to correct me if i’m wrong.
If it were really about poise and eloquence, nobody would need to see the contestants in the least amount of clothing one can wear in our society without it being considered actively obscene.
The concept seems to be that it’s about both; beauty and brains (and ambition and …). You can find women who are prettier than Miss America, and you can find people who are smarter than Miss America. Apparently the organizers are looking for someone who eptiomizes their concept of the optimal combination of both. A sound mind in a sound body and all that – it goes back to the ancient Greeks, and probably well before.
I don’t go out of my way to watch the contest, but after watching is or parts of it a few times and having seen “America’s Top Model” because it’s on the gym TV when I’m doing my 45 minutes on the elliptical, I can tell you I’d much rather become acquainted with Miss America than America’s Top Model (or any of her judges, for that matter). The former seems much more well-rounded (no pun intended, although come to think of it …).
but a surprising number of surgeons are also good musicians (my workplace had a charity concert featuring surgeon musicians just last month). My guess is that both surgery and music are fields in which good math/abstract thinking skills, and excellent work discipline, are extremely useful, so it’s natural for there to be some crossover.
It’s commonplace that the kids I interview to go to MIT (who are by default among the top math students in the U.S.) also are attracted to making music. About 3/4 of the kids I talk to, all of whom are among the top high school kids in the nation in math, are involved in performing music. And my choirmaster, who’s an adjunct professor in music, noted that while he’s not at all involved in science or math, his math aptitude scores were way over average.