Beauty Pageants

At best beauty pageants are unbearably corny, at worst bizarrely sexist. If this kind of display is about celebrating womanhood itself, how could that not be insulting? As a man, I don't think Chippendales dancers or weightlifters represent what I should be. I'd pick writers or something.

If the pageants are more realistically considered to be about just a tiny subset of women who like devoting a big part of their lives to competing over who looks cutest in a bathing suit, well, that's a fringe element isn't it? Maybe they should be treated as such, sort of like people who collect odd objects (like road maps in my case) and have conventions, rather than having their competitions mass-televised.

They don't celebrate female beauty in all forms, just a sort of outdated corny contradictory image of peaches-and-cream wholesomeness jammed together with semi-exhibitionism... now did I just describe a very common, old-fashioned sort of having-your-cake-and-eating-it-too male fantasy about women from generations past, or didn't I?

We have fashion shows for fashion, where there's actual creativity at work.... and strangely enough, I think things such as Miss Nude America are healthier than regular Miss America, relatively. Any sexism is out in the open, not hiding in the shadows like a stalker.... this kind of thing is unpretentious, more fun, and more honest. I'm not saying it's not twisted, but it's more honest twistedness... perhaps what Hawkeye on MASH would call "honest weirdoism".