The misses of America

Whatever doubts were left about the Miss America Organization’s views of women were cleared up last week when they announced that Rush Limbaugh would be guest-judging this year’s competition.

For years, Miss America has faced accusations from feminists that the competition is degrading to women. The traditional response is that Miss America is about honoring beautiful, talented, smart women with scholarship money for college.

The feminist response generally goes something like this:

Scholarship, huh? I guess that’s why only eight of the 52 contestants ever get to open their mouths on stage.

And what about the swimsuit – I mean, “health and fitness” – portion? Please. If we were really testing these women’s healthy lifestyles, we would actually provide them with a pool to match those pretty suits.

So, in an attempt to garner publicity, they selected Rush Limbaugh, the president of the He-man Woman-Haters Club, as their guest judge.

But Rush is just the latest addition in the Feminists vs. Miss America debate that has been raging for decades.  

In fact, Miss America was one of the original modern feminist causes. The phrase “bra-burning” comes from the 1968 Miss America protest, when women threw clothes into a bin to be burned.

Clearly, it didn’t take Rush Limbaugh for us to figure out that Miss America was bad for women. The real question is why do we still feel the need to say it?

The ugly truth is that we have to say it because we haven’t convinced enough people.

And by people, I mean women.

While feminists were parading goats around outside the competition, millions of American women were tuning in inside their homes. Not because the menacing men made them, but because they liked it – enjoyed it, even.

That, ladies, is the real problem – and it’s a whole lot bigger than Rush Limbaugh.  
Even now when I tune in, I find myself imagining what it would be like to wear that crown. And why shouldn’t I? After all, she embodies everything that they’ve been telling us for years we should be: beautiful, but not too sexy; skinny, but not too unhealthy; smart, but not too opinionated.

She’s so hard to shake because she’s so much a part of what we’re supposed to want. The draw of Miss America is stitched so tightly into the fabric of growing up as a girl in this country that we can’t help but love watching it.

The mold of the angry, hairy, bra-burning feminist is in many ways just as stifling as the prim and primped Miss America. Such a rigid dichotomy leaves no room for the millions of American women who fall somewhere in between.

Just as Miss America is a problem for feminists, feminism is a problem for young women.

We feminists need to stop all the heckling over Rush Limbaugh and Miss America and start making room for a more complex view of women.