Miss America - Good Looks Out!

[vetuste_ennemi]

https://citizen.co.za/news/news-world/1945715/miss-america-pageant-bans-swimsuits-and-judging-contestants-on-appearance/

Good news for fat feminists everywhere: you can enter the contest and, rather than be judged on white patriarchal standards of beauty, be judged instead on "talent and brain".

Seems to me this is sending mixed messages to all the "thick" women out there.

[naomi24]

I don't see anything attractive about 'fat'.

[Sqad]

What a pity as I am now going out for breakfast when it looks like this thread is "hotting up."..........;-)

[naomi24]

Haha! And he^ likes them hot! ;o)

[ummmm]

We're not talking obese.

[1ozzy]

//I think these things are hard-wired.//
Which things?
Surely not all of ourselves?

[ichkeria]

Judged on talent and brains eh?
Whatever next?

[Prudie]

There are already plenty of avenues open to the talented and the brainy and always have been. What is wrong with also giving a route for the just pretty who may otherwise have nowhere to go to make a name for themselves? It's a shame.

[Deskdiary]

^^^Spot-on.

[ichkeria]

Plenty of avenues open to the pretty and gormless too I think
;-)

[Old_Geezer]

Someone forgot that a beauty contest is primarily about beauty, even if other stuff has been added. It seems some potential contestants wanted to be a beauty queen withouthaving to show that their bodies look beautiful, and the organizers fell for it. Well as the main viewers are likely young males who wish to see beautiful young females I'm sure they're not going to fail to continue tuning in. I suspect it's a deliberate and (not so) covert way of making the contest less viable so it can be stopped using the 'no interest' excuse.

[ichkeria]

I always found things like Miss World unbelievably boring: a lot of shapely lasses looking more or less identical. Until you got to the bit where they were allowed to speak and you found it who was kind to animals and who wanted world peace :-)

[1ozzy]

Or all tastes O-G ;-)

[Ken4155]

Love the comment from a PaulBracken, underneath the story; "No more scantily clad women during the Miss America Pageant.......sounds like great radio."
Wonder what The Donald thinks?

[youngmafbog]

Just utterly rediculous on two counts.
1) Why shouldnt pretty slim girls flaunt their "assets" and often earn good money?
2)Fat is not good, in the UK it is going to break the NHS so nothing should be promoting overweight as beauty just as anorexic bodies should also not be promoted.

[kvalidir]

To some degree I agree that a beauty contest should represent what people consider to be beautiful physically, but intelligence and personality factor in that as well. You can be as gorgeous as you like, but if you're a trophy hunter you are automatically ugly in my eyes for example, I'm sure others have their own pet personality flaws that would render the most gorgeous ugly.
There is also the question of promoting healthy weights to young girls. I'm bang on in the middle of my BMI for my height, I'm fit and well and don't have any health issues related to that healthy weight, and yet I was told earlier this year that in order to be 'castable' I needed to lose 30lbs. That is a LOT of weight at my weight and would put me into the dangerously underweight catagory. Personally I told them that was absurd and they could shove it in that case, but there are hundreds, probably thousands of girls my age and younger who would have simply starved themselves until they were well on their way to a lifelong bad relationship with food, self confidence and self esteem. I've had my confidence knocked lately not because anyone was mean but simply by observation about appearance within the industry I work in, and I can only imagine that beauty contests are a thousand times worse. This is 2018, we don't need to be limiting normality in terms of beauty, and still sticking with 'too thin is beautiful'- it's not it's frightening, and it's not beautiful and it's not normal.

[Deskdiary]

What is so wrong with admiring slim and pretty girls simply because they are slim and pretty? Why is this considered bad?

[kvalidir]

I don't think it's bad Deskdiary, I do it myself with men obviously, I think 'oh God he's fine, or oh wow no thanks' it's part of human nature/ mother nature/ let's find something to breed with etc, and if you called it the 'I wouldn't mind tapping that American Beauty' competition I'd be right up there with you agreeing that it's fine but how many girls would want to enter a competition called that eh, it's the promotion of beauty ONLY being skin deep and of a certain formula that's wrong, not the idea that to be slim and pretty is soemhow bad, it's not.

[Old_Geezer]

Whilst beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so everything could be considered beautiful by someone, it's fair to say beautiful people have a weight range around ahealthy norm, so neither too slim nor too cuddly tend to be considered beautiful. Any industry that insists you must make yourself outside a healthy weight range should be looked on with suspicion, but that has nothing to do with looking beautiful. A beautiful mind competition is something else altogether.

[naomi24]

//it's the promotion of beauty ONLY being skin deep and of a certain formula that's wrong//

I disagree. If a contest is to be judged on physical beauty, so be it. Some have got it, some haven't. I'm happy with that.

[Old_Geezer]

Vanity and exhibitionism, plus self confidence in this case, is about the physical appearance. Any suggestion that it's being pushed that, that's the only thing worthwhile in life, is nonsense. That's an interpretation put on it by some viewers who have "the wrong end of the stick".