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Swimsuits were the most sexist component of the Miss America Pageant. I'm glad they're gone, but for a real feminist win, let's add a fitness contest.
The #MeToo movement has claimed another victim: The Miss America Pageant's “Lifestyle and Fitness” competition, better known as the swimsuit contest. But don't get too excited. It's not the clear-cut feminist victory you might think.
Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989 and now chair of the pageant's board of directors, announced Tuesday that the swimsuit portion of the pageant (sorry, as of Tuesday, competition) is no more. Women no longer have to walk on stage in front of millions in a bikini and high heels to earn scholarship money.
It was no doubt the most sexist component of the event. Yet in dropping the swimsuit segment and not replacing it with a fitness competition, the Miss America Organization is conceding that the “Lifestyle and Fitness” portion of the event has never actually been about fitness.
It has been about artifice and contradiction: Wear a swimsuit, but don’t swim in it. Do not go barefoot in said non-swimming bathing suit, instead wear 6-inch heels. Look slender and muscular, but not too thin and not too strong. Compete for college scholarships, but work on your six-pack first. After all, you'll be showing as much skin as a college student on spring break.
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While many are thrilled that it is no longer necessary to bare bodies for books, pageant purists shake their heads that Miss America without swimsuit simply isn’t Miss America. It is actually surprising that “fitness” is no longer a category at all in the revamped Miss America competition. Being fit and feminine has never been as accepted as it is today — from fitness celebrities on Instagram to female athletes such as Serena Williams and Aly Raisman.
The Miss America Pageant is deeply rooted in swimsuit-ready bodies. In 1921, what is now known as Miss America began as a bathing beauties contest in Atlantic City. While the eight contestants who competed appeared in their swimsuits, not one of them could have actually gone swimming in their garb.
In its first two decades, the Miss America Pageant stayed true to its bathing beauty roots. That began to change in the late 1940s. In 1946, Miss America terminology went from “bathing suit” to “swimsuit.”
The last time a winner was crowned in swimwear was in 1947; by 1950 the winner refused to even pose in her swimsuit (which ultimately led to the creation of Miss USA — yes, the Miss USA that Donald Trump owned until 2015).
As times changed, Miss America was slow to adjust. In the 1960s and 1970s, when bikinis were all the rage, Miss America contestants had to wear one-piece suits with modesty panels. When Carlson competed in 1988, she did not have to wear a modesty panel, but she did have a special swimsuit made — not one in which she would have actually gone swimming. In her 2015 book Getting Real, Carlson describes traveling from Minnesota to Fort Worth in order to get a custom suit designed out of “secret material” that “hugged your body in all the right places to enhance your bustline and slenderize your waistline.”
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Miracle suits such as Carlson's dominated until bikinis were allowed in 1997. That year’s winner sported a bikini with boy shorts, but a pictorial analysis I did for my upcoming book on pageantry and femininity shows that no winner since then has worn anything but a bikini. My research also showed that the competition category officially became “Lifestyle and Fitness” in 2001.
Carlson was a #MeToo pioneer who sued Fox chairman Roger Ailes for sexual harassment in 2016. She was a natural choice to lead the Miss America Organization in the wake of its own sexual harassment scandal, revealed through a series of leaked emails last year.
Since she took the reins in January, many have assumed that swimsuits would go. What is surprising is that the entire category related to fitness was eliminated. In other pageants that do not have swimsuit competition — including sister pageant Miss America’s Outstanding Teen — the contestants must perform a fitness routine while wearing (form-fitting) workout attire. The routine includes planks, squats and jumping jacks.
Having an actual fitness component would be a more accurate reflection of life for today’s young women. The reality is that American females — young and old — have an ideal of a healthy lifestyle. For some, the focus is on being thin, but for many others the focus is on being fit and healthy. This can and should be reflected in what a body can do rather than only how it looks.
While dropping swimsuits for Miss America is a decision that feels very of the moment in our #MeToo culture, don’t forget that if you want to see women in bathing suits on your TV screen, you can always tune in to an episode of The Bachelor. And if you want to see what fit female bodies can do, watch a WNBA game or American Ninja Warrior.
Hilary Levey Friedman teaches in the Department of Education at Brown University and had the current Miss America as a student in her course on pageantry. Her book on the links between pageantry and femininity will be published by Beacon Press in 2020. Follow her on Twitter: @hleveyfriedman
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