Televised beauty pageants have
reached such a nadir of cultural relevance today that it seems the only time we
pay attention to them is when a contestant makes a viral-worthy flub during the
question-and-answer portion. Then we have our stereotypes confirmed about
beautiful women being brainless, and everyone has a good laugh at their expense.
Shame on us.
Few of us remember pageant moments
of grace and talent and poise, but who doesn’t remember the painfully
incomprehensible answer from poor Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina, to why
she thinks so many Americans are geography-challenged? Or Miss Utah, Marissa
Powell, saying
that the answer to gender pay inequity is “to create education better”?
This time it was our very own Miss
USA, Nia Sanchez, who found herself at the wrong end of a rather heavy question
from boxer and pageant judge Manny Pacquiao during the Miss Universe pageant
earlier this week. “If you were given 30 seconds to deliver a message to global
terrorists,” he struggled in awkward English, “what would you say?”
Honestly, what would any of us say
in such a theoretical scenario? “Stop killing people”? Is lecturing “global
terrorists” now one of the duties and obligations of Miss Universe? What was
Miss Sanchez expected to do, deliver a concisely-crafted statement on foreign
policy and a strategy for defusing international terrorism? All of the policy
wonks in our own government can’t even manage that, but Miss USA is expected to
have an answer up the sleeve of her sleeveless gown?
So Nia Sanchez did what beauty
pageant contestants are expected to do in these tricky circumstances, and that
is offer up a generic olive branch to everyone everywhere: “I know as Miss USA I can always spread a
message of hope and love and peace, and I would do my very best to spread that
message to them and everyone else in the world.”
She ended as first runner-up to Miss Colombia, so it isn’t as if her
unsophisticated answer got her booted offstage. But to many Monday morning
pageant judges, it felt like a bland cop-out, and so the predictable internet
snark began. “Hope, love, and peace will be your message to global terrorists?
GOOD ONE MISS USA,” read one tweet. “This is why we’re doomed,” read one headline.
Pageant contestants learned their
lesson about taking a stand on the issues back in the very politicized 2009
Miss USA pageant, when Miss California Carrie Prejean was cornered with a gotcha! question from gossip maven Perez
Hilton about gay marriage. She dared to answer from her conscience, and outrage
ensued over her shocking belief that marriage should be between a man and a
woman. Hilton, having gotten the controversy he was angling for, blogged
gleefully about it the next day, calling her a “dumb b**ch” and a “c**t.” He told ABC News, “She
lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before
that.”
Pageant winners, by definition, are
supposed to be emissaries of good will, representative of their entire state or
country – or in the case of this week’s pageant, the whole universe. Politics,
by its very nature, is divisive and contentious. It’s a no-win situation,
literally, for contestants to answer politicized questions, and they shouldn’t
have to.
Beauty pageant contestants, like
fashion models, get a bum rap for not swelling the ranks of MENSA, but this is
unfair. The handful in both fields that I have known have been educated and
cultured, but at that age they don’t have all the answers. No one expects
24-year-old pro football players or insurance salesmen or Hollywood actors or dental
technicians or people of any other profession to stand up under lights and
cameras and expound intelligently on a pop quiz of random world issues – why
expect that of very young women in beauty pageants?
Nia Sanchez is 24 years old. The
aforementioned Miss Upton and Miss Powell were 18 and 21 respectively at the
time of their humiliating brain freezes, enshrined on the internet for all
time. At that age range I wouldn’t have had articulate, soundbite-ready answers
to politically-charged questions, either, much less the poise to respond to
them spontaneously with a smile as the world watched.
If you think pageants are shallow
and sexist, then don’t watch. If you enjoy the gowns and the hair and the
beauty, then appreciate them for that. But it’s mean-spirited and uncharitable
to hold these ladies up as objects of ridicule for not being political pundits.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 2/5/15)
