Goodbye Miss American Pie.

Meet the First Miss America . ( ↑ )Miss Margaret Gorman.  In 1925 won 
the "crown" that started it all . Times have 
changed , and a century later,  innocence is now
lost .

I  think I  know why Miss America Beauty Pageant  finally ditched the swimsuit  . Its more of a political statement  .The news comes as part of a larger change in the pageant’s standards, explained former FOX News anchor (1.1)>>Gretchen Carlson, who chairs the Miss America Organization’s board of trustees and was herself crowned Miss America in 1989. “We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance,” she said. “It’s going to be what comes out of their mouth that we’re interested in.” If it took a long time , if anyone has paid into watching the long (1.2)>>American tradition of judging beauty , poise . Harking back in the old days ... watching the Miss America pageant was part of the prime time family hour , if you lived through the 70s and 80s growing up , the swimsuits were not so "scantly clad" as they are being described now. (2)>>The "revealing" suits appeared right around the 1997 when contestants were allowed  two piece suits , but nearly two decades pass , now the swimsuits slowly stared to resemble beachwear that looked like something out of a "spring break beauty pageant " for revelers . The last time I saw Miss America contest that was my impression .Was it about ratings ???  I think it was .The Atlantic City pageant may have been around for 96 years, but it's weathered some serious lows in the ratings over the years. In 2007, after Miss America had been jettisoned from ABC and only aired on cable, the show managed just 2.4 million viewers. Though the first pageant broadcast, in 1954, aired at a time when Americans only had a handful of networks to choose from, 27 million people tuned in to watch Lee Meriwether become Miss America. This decision is an emotional one for the long-term volunteers and participants in the Miss America Organization. After all, Miss America started in 1921 as a “bathing beauties” contest on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, and letting go of tradition can be difficult for some. But over the past decade, the relevance of Miss America’s swimsuit portion has been hotly debated among those in the pageant industry.   Like all other beauty contests : Miss USA , Miss Universe , etc all for one  these models to be crowned to market products . (3)>>Has any of this advanced women ? It just did not seem that we should watch the show , watch as much as what the women look like play things , but to see how "educated" they are  ? Carlson Tuesday morning, now  the chairwoman of the trustees for the Miss America organization, revealed that the pageant will do away with its notorious swimsuit competition. An outspoken supporter of the #MeToo movement and advocate for victims of sexual assault, Carlson, crowned Miss America in 1989, made her announcement on Good Morning America. “We are no longer a pageant, we are a competition,” Carlson said. “We will no longer judge our candidates on their outward physical appearance. That’s huge, and that means that we will no longer have a swimsuit competition and that is official as of Sept. 9, when we have our competition in Atlantic City.”
The Miss America Trump "factor"?
President Donald Trump seemed to have a rebutting effect on social causes . Donald Trump owned the Miss USA pageant—part of the Miss Universe organization, not to be confused with the aforementioned Miss America competition—from 1996 to 2015. His time as owner of the pageant was plagued with scandals, ranging from the disturbing to downright cruel  He even implemented something called “The Trump Rule,” where he oversaw pre-screenings of Miss USA contestants in revealing outfits and divided them into groups according to which ones he found most attractive. Then, he’d demand that each contestant name another contestant they considered beautiful, and would separate the women accordingly.  Beauty contests can be a bit crude if you follow the Trump rule . Accusations of sexism had followed Trump long before he came back into the spotlight for the 2012 election. As Erin O'Brien wrote in a 2005 article on "The Apprentice," saying that "Donald Trump might be sexist is like saying the sky might be blue."
More "Brains" , more "Braun" , less beauty ?
Since the onset of the # Me Too movement a lot has come under scrutiny in anything that comes out of Hollywood . So all this may have "killed" the "beauty" out of the contest . They want Miss America’s crown to be based on liberal ideas such as “diversity, inclusion, social causes and social impact initiatives.” The Miss America contest isn't bringing in big ratings because contestants aren't dumb bimbos. After the women's movement took hold, there was a whole lot of soul searching (in between waterproof mascara dabbing). Contestants not only had to be lookers. Meanwhile, the corporate sponsors who foot the bill for the scholarships get to use this altruistic pursuit as a tax write-off. It's hardly fair to the bow-legged, knock-kneed, snaggle-toothed, cross-eyed chick who has to flip hamburgers to finance her own education.They had to have smarts now .  No more bathing suits, no more evening gowns. So now we might see "plus size " women ? take center stage ? After all you would think in this day and age of inclusiveness we'd see more bronze than beauty? It remains to be seen . As we say "Goodbye Miss American Pie ....................."

Bye, bye Miss American Pie

Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry

And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye

Singin' this'll be the day that I die

This'll be the day that I die

Did you write the book of love

And do you have faith in God above

If the Bible tells you so?

Do you believe in rock and roll?

Can music…

NOTES AND COMMENTS:

 (↑ )Miss Margaret Gorman.Miss America started in 1921 as a way to improve tourism on the New Jersey coast in Atlantic City. According to the historical Encyclopedia of New Jersey, 100,000 people turned out on the local boardwalk to witness Margaret Gorman, a 16-year-old from Washington, DC, named the “Most Beautiful Bathing Girl in America”. She won the Golden Mermaid trophy and $100 in prize money, and when she returned in 1922 she was “draped in an American flag and called ‘Miss America’ ”. The pageant was born. (1.1)>>Gretchen Carlson. Now that Gretchen Carlson took over &As chairwoman of the organization, Carlson led the move to eliminate the much-maligned bikini-and-stiletto parade beamed from the glossy Atlantic City, N.J., stage to the world.For years, Carlson said the pageant had been pushed to defend the bikini contest as a celebration of discipline and fitness. Now that it’s gone, Carlson said she’s being questioned for eliminating the showcase of supremely shaped physiques — and the work entailed in getting to that shape.(1)>>American tradition of judging beauty , poise. The 2017 Judges’ Manual lists the qualities and attributes required of titleholders, in this order: “beautiful, well-spoken, intelligent, talented, able to relate to young people, reflective of women her age (she should not be a 35-year-old trapped inside a 20-year-old body), charismatic, dynamic/energetic — that ‘IT’ quality that is so hard to define, mature enough to handle the job and all of its responsibilities, comfortable ‘in her own skin,’ manageable, punctual and flexible.” (2)>>The "revealing" suits. Part of the problem was that Miss America's ratings were tanking . If you had to compare with other "pageants" , Miss Universe , Miss Teen USA , they looked  scantier and scantier , so was this an executive rating pitch for a two piece suit ? Could be . (3)>>Has any of this advanced women ? The biggest question , in our day and age , there is a lot of mental conditioning of young girls to beauty products . Its so far gone from when 16 year old Miss Gorman took the crown in 1925 . Advancement of women has been too slow , women won the right to vote just around the time of the first Miss America . Long before feminists began protesting the Miss America pageant in the late 1960s, Christian groups had signaled their disapproval. When the Miss America pageant began in 1921, Baptists, Quakers and Methodists alike called for Christians to steer clear of Atlantic City, N.J., and other bathing revues. Southern Baptists passed a “Resolution on Beauty Contests” in 1926 that stated, in part, that “‘Whereas, ‘Beauty contests’ and so-called ‘bathing revues’… tend to lower true and genuine respect for womanhood … We, the Southern Baptist Convention do deplore and condemn all such contests and revues.” As innocent as it began the beauty pageant fell pray to the New Morality of the 1960s onward , perhaps under the spell of Hugh Hefner's "philosophy" giving women , contests a back seat to a vary slow ride to progress.