The End of the Princess Fantasy?

Can you imagine? Donald Trump is involved in another controversy that has nothing to do with Barack Obama's birth certificate!

Miss Pennsylvania has stepped down because she believes Donald Trump's Miss USA pageant was rigged:

A posting on Miss Pennsylvania Sheena Monnin's Facebook page claims another contestant learned the names of the top 5 finishers on Sunday morning — hours before the show was broadcast.

Trump responded in his inimitable style, saying, "We're going to be suing her now," and "[F]rankly, in my opinion, I saw her barely a second and she didn't deserve to be in the top 15." And here I thought Miss USA was all about poise, talent and character.

Trump claims that Monnin stepped down in protest over his decision to allow transgender contestants (one such entrant in the Miss Canada pageant forced the issue). This was echoed by the winner of this year's Miss USA contest, Miss Rhode Island Olivia Culpo. In the so-called "make-or-break" interview round Culpo bravely sucked up to Trump, saying she believed transgender contestants should be allowed.

This makes me wonder: why do we still have beauty pageants like Miss USA and Miss America? I don't question it because Trump's Miss USA pageant now allows those people in, in the same way some some people believe allowing gays to marry somehow negates the meaning of heterosexual marriage.

But in this day and age what is the point of lining up a bunch of women in bathing suits, then evening gowns, then have them do a little talent show, and then ask them a bunch of questions to find out if they're really as vapid as they look?


In the early days of television beauty pageants were a great excuse for TV execs to show lots of scantily clad women. But these days we've got an infinite supply of Victoria's Secret and Sports Illustrated swimsuit specials, salacious network shows, cable porn channels, and an entire Internet dedicated to serving up pictures of naked women.


In its heyday the beauty pageant was the American princess fantasy, one of the few venues where "ladies" could compete against each other. But these days women participate in sports, go to college and med school, compete with men for the same jobs in the real world and by some measures are starting to outperform them. And though I'm no fan of them, highly-produced "reality" shows like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol have supplanted the princess fantasy with dreams of success that require real talent.

Beauty contests like Miss USA are dinosaurs from a bygone era. The only apparent point of Trump's pageant is to scout for his next wife.