Beauty pageants hold a special place in American culture. Although the phenomenon is prevalent around the world, the modern beauty pageant is accredited to American sensibilities including its conventions and connotations. Pageants are often criticized for ranking women like prize horses and creating a potentially unattainable ideal beauty. But over the past century, pageants have developed a character to supplement their meat market criticisms. With the advent of television, aspects of the beauty pageant have been perpetuated on a nationwide level, using television conventions to promote a pre-established ideology of nationalism, commercialism and womanhood. The beauty pageant utilizes televisual conventions to promote a pre-established ideology of nationalism, womanhood and commercialism. The genre analysis is deeply intertwined with its case study, the Miss America Pageant, and explores the pageant’s current adaptations for a new, digital, global community.
In 1854, PT Barnum held the first beauty contest as a supplement to his traveling carnival. He used the female body as a gimmick to attract paying customers to his world of relaxation, amusement and entertainment (Riverol). The competition ultimately failed due to the assumed reputations of the participating women; the public woman was often deemed of loose values and morals. The competition was quickly eliminated from the show due to negative attention, although Barnum did achieve success with mail-in beauty contest using daguerreotypes instead. The photographic beauty pageant became a popular item for many publications including the New York Times (Savage 17). Years would pass before another beauty contest would be attempted with any success.
A variety of social changes were required in order for the beauty pageant to develop at the beginning of the 20th century. The industrial revolution led to more leisure time, much of which was spent bathing at the beach, the women’s movement gave women some independence to be seen in public without a man, and the bathing suit was invented and perfected between 1900-1920 (Hamlin). These shifts led to an appreciation of barely clad bodies, preparing the nation for the nation’s most famous pageant, The Miss America Pageant, in 1921.
The Miss America Pageant was developed by local businesses as a ploy to keep tourists in Atlantic City after Labor Day. Advertised as an “inter-city beauty contest,” the event featured “thousands of the nation’s most beautiful women” (Riverol). The five-day festival possessed a deep-sea theme: a visual and audile spectacle with sea nymphs and a float dedicated to King Neptune. The winner, Margaret Gorman from Washington, D.C., was hailed as the ideal American woman and the New York Times reported, “It is in her type that the hope of the country rests” (Ades). The pageant continued for another six years, and succeeded in using young women to bring additional income to boardwalk businesses. The popularity and success of the pageant also encouraged competing pageants; across the country, businesses learned that pretty young women attracted customers and pageants became popular with small rural carnivals and massive historical events. Even the Klu Klux Klan initiated a pageant for “Miss 100 percent America” (Ades).
In Glassberg’s History of Pageantry in American Culture, the pageant is defined as an elaborate public dramatic presentation that usually depicts a historical or traditional event. He claims that the promoters in Atlantic City could exploit this wholesome image by calling their new beauty contest a ‘pageant, bathing their sea side urban enterprise in the air of small-town moral respectability” (Glassberg 238). The term pageant has now been usurped by the beauty contest, becoming eternally linked for many Americans. The actual definition assists in encapsulating one part of the American beauty pageant, its role as a national unifier, but this characteristic would merely justify the commercially driven motives of its organizers.
Alternatively, women used the pageant to achieve fame and fortune. Women poured into Atlantic City with dreams of becoming famous Hollywood or stage actresses; winning the pageant meant offers from studios, advertising companies and more. Contestants were required to be at least 5’4,less than 130 lbs. and unmarried (Riverol); they provided the perfect physique for the entertainment industry, and came complete with prior media exposure and popular glamour. Ruth Malcomson, Miss American 1924, earned over $100,000 during her reign, more than Babe Ruth or the President (Ades).
Despite its success from a financial perspective, the contest received negative criticism from the surging women’s movement. Feminists accused the contest, and subsequently Atlantic City businesses, of objectifying women, comparing the judging process to a meat market. At the same time, issues of morality plagued the contestants; civic and religious organization condemned the pageant for being indecent and exploiting women while corrupting them through outside pressures and bad press (Riverol). “Before the competition, the contestants were splendid examples of innocence and pure womanhood,” one protestor argued. “Afterward their heads were filled with vicious ideas” (Ades). One congressman went so far as to propose legislation to ban beauty pageants (Riverol). Amidst this controversy, the pageant was discontinued from 1927 to 1933, due to a dwindling audience and potential negative attention.
In 1933, the pageant was revived in order to battle the decrease in tourism caused by the Great Depression, but the format changed drastically to avoid the prior debate regarding the legitimacy of the pageant and the women. The arrival of the contestants was subdued and events such as the bathing suit competition became private events, where only a few privileged spectators were invited (Riverol). Many of the events were held indoors in order to reduce the prominence of women as spectacle; this way, thereby allowing the pageant to continue under the radar of the feminist movement as well as public and government officials. Because of the economic situation of the nation, community involvement was minimal, prizes were small, and the pageant became a private spectacle, intimate and esoteric.
“Being a Miss America in 1933 gave you a better sense as to the pulse of the people in general. Prizes were not monetary and of course, no scholarship money. Everyone shared and gave of themselves. It was a beautiful rewarding experience.” — Marion Bergeron (Riverol 31)
In 1935, the Miss America Pageant organizers hired Lenora Slaughter to overhaul the pageant’s image. She was responsible for eliminating any questionable connotations of the competition and redefining the event as empowering and respectful of young women. She revived the boardwalk parade that initiated the festivities, introduced a talent competition and instituted an age limit of eighteen for all contestants. Over the next fifteen years, Slaughter spearheaded a series of changes that became the defining criteria for the pageant: contestants were required to compete under the title of a city, state or region, a 1 am curfew was imposed on the women, they were chaperoned all week and could not be seen interacting with men, and the preliminary competitions were deemphasized in favor of the talent competition. These changes served to legitimize the pageant and eliminate the ideas of marketing physicality (Banet-Weiser 47). Slaughter successfully turned the pageant into something that women wanted to participate in (Ades) and managed to decrease the sexual quality of the pageant by reinforcing the morals and upstanding virtue of the women involved. In 1940, the event was moved to Convention Hall in Atlantic City that housed over 25,000 spectators, and the Showman’s Variety Jubilee became known as the Miss America Pageant (Riverol 33).
In the years leading up to World War II, the pageant began to develop its image as a national event that promoted womanhood. Representatives of civic organizations joined the board of directors, which was once only composed of Atlantic City businessmen, and the organization became a non-profit vehicle, promoting female scholarship and social pride (Riverol). During the war years, many large events were cancelled in order to divert funds to the war effort, but Slaughter convinced the American government to allow the pageant to continue, claming that the Miss America Pageant was “emblematic of the nation’s spirit” (Ades). Miss America 1943 then went on to sell $2.5 million in war bonds (missamerica.org). Although the budget for the pageant was severely reduced, the spectacle remained in full force. In 1945, the pageant organizers introduced a scholarship for the winner, thereby confirming the pageants goal of promoting female scholarship. Slaughter had successfully desexualized the pageant; the contestants were seen as singers, scholars, speakers, and anything but sex objects (Riverol 42); this was reinforced by Slaughter’s choice to crown the winner in an evening gown instead of the traditional bathing suit.
The pageant’s original goals of making money were eclipsed by its new reputation of promoting pageantry, beauty and scholarship, but the profit driven motives were still clear. The pageant depended heavily on its sponsors to produce the event. In 1951, Yolande Betbeze, refused to pose in a Catalina swimsuit for marketing purposes. Catalina swimwear withdrew their sponsorship and initiated their own beauty contest that unabashedly rewarded women for their looks, the Miss USA pageant and eventually Miss Universe. The original goal of using beautiful women as gimmicks to attract customers and sell products was again employed, but this time without the pretense of empowering women.
In 1954, the final round of the Miss America Pageant was broadcast on ABC to millions of American homes. Slaughter had spent the past twenty years perfecting the pageant and chiseling its image as the ideal embodiment of American womanhood. One final change occurred before the television debut: the finalists were narrowed from fifteen to ten (Riverol). Having solidified its principles and its position in American culture as well as its format, the pageant was now ready for a primetime television audience.
Prior to 1954, the pageant was broadcast on newsreels and viewers were privy to certain segments of the pageant. Over 12 million moviegoers saw Marilyn Meseke, Miss American 1938, in Movietone News (Riverol 32). Although popular, audiences could not fully appreciate the experience of attending the Miss America Pageant. By broadcasting the finals, the event was delivered into the home. The pageant became a media ritual, complete with nationalism, conspicuous consumption and physicality (Couldry). Families could congregate around the television and celebrate this annual event. One major concern of pageant organizers was the effect that television would have on the ticket revenue. ABC was required to black out local neighborhoods to ensure that interested parties would buy tickets to the event and television would not reduce the profit of the pageant (Riverol). In its early broadcast years, the pageant was still a special, televised event, characterized by its restricted attendance.
The broadcast, co-produced by the Philco Corporation, was successful; over 27 million viewers in 8,714,000 homes watched the crowning of Lee Meriwether, earning it a 20.9 rating and a 39 share (Riverol 55). The 90-minute program featured the five finalists participating in the talent competition, swimsuit and evening gowns. The winner received $5,000 in scholarships, jewelry and other accessories, a screen test with Warner Bros. Pictures and a series of guest appearances on programs including What’s My Line and The Philco TV Playhouse (Riverol 55).
The original broadcast was designed with the live audience in mind; cameras and television equipment did not interfere with the visual pleasure of those in Convention Hall. Over 18,000 spectators arrived in Atlantic City and the event continued as normal. To guarantee an error-free performance, the winner was informed of her victory off camera, but received her crown on screen, causing uproar among the television audience who demanded to see the winner’s reaction to her crowing (Riverol). After 1954, Miss America was always announced and crowned on camera.
During the next few years, the Miss America Pageant would be one of the largest grossing programs on television and networks competed for the rights. It was cheap to produce; the organization took care of preparation and venue, the network simply had to provide the cameras and cameramen. The popularity of the program also increased corporate sponsorship and allowed the pageant to offer over $200,000 in scholarships for its contestants and guaranteed a captive audience composed of women, the primary consumers in the home
The competition underwent changes in order to adapt to this new medium. In 1955, the organization introduced Bert Parks as host and Glenn Osser as the musical director; allocated $30,000 for design and purchase better lighting equipment (Riverol), lengthened the telecast to two hours, and instituted what would come to be known as the ‘Parade of States,’ which introduced all of the contestants before establishing the semi-finalists. CBS introduced a half-hour telecast of the parade and by 1959 all of the states were represented. The beauty pageant as we know it was launched.
The Miss America Pageant is one of the longest running television programs in American history, along with Meet the Press (1947), The Today Show (1952) and The Tonight Show (1954). It has bounced between all three major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, but touts a relationship with the former. Each network has affected its own changes to the program: CBS broadcast a half hour telecast of the opening parade and NBC broadcast a pre-recorded version of the program in 1976. Despite its affiliation with ABC, CBS has delivered three broadcasts in Variety’s top 100 television broadcasts, 1961, 1963 and 1964 (Variety.com).
The program has created a genre unto itself; as the first televised beauty contest, the conventions employed by the Miss America Pageant have been adopted by subsequent beauty pageants including Miss USA, Miss Universe and most recently, The Swan. It combines other genres to create a style that is unique and specialized, employing techniques used by variety shows, news and special event programming. The pageant also capitalizes on many of the characteristics of television to promote its own goals including television’s effect on national identity, commercialism and consumerism.
As early hybrid programming, the beauty pageant is not restricted by the expectations of preceding programs. The pageant adheres to a format commonly known as vaudeville or variety programming featuring playful banter and dialogue, which could be defined as skits, as well as multiple song and dance numbers, surprise guests and a large cast capable of performing many duties in the program (i.e. contestants). In the seventies, as variety shows regained popularity, the pageant adapted its schedule to accommodate more choreographed routines and now opens the program with a massive showcase highlighting all of the contestants. For those who do not advance to the semi-finals, additional routines are necessary to fill time during the telecast.
The talent competition strengthens the show as a part of the variety genre. Each of the contestants performs a routine ranging from figure skating to painting and baton twirling to singing. This variety of routines becomes a benchmark of the program; each contestant puts forth all of her energy for a routine that may be completely unrelated to the surrounding segments and hopefully outshines performances of her competitors. In 2004, the Miss America Organization decided to eliminate the talent portion of the competition, instead showing pre-recorded video footage of finalists performing a given talent. This was intended to influence ratings, but by including the video footage, they maintain the appeal of variety programming.
Many guest stars are prominently featured throughout the program including the current Miss America, past contestants, Mr. America, and the celebrity judges. Representative of conservative popular culture, the pageant regularly features wholesome pop stars. In 2000, Donny and Marie Osmond hosted the program and in 2004, American Idol runner-up, Clay Aiken performed. The judges also function as important guests. Before the women’s movement, they were selected from the local businesses and charity organizations; after the 1968 protests against the pageant, the judges were used to tout the integration of the pageant and its respect for sisterhood. The panel is now composed of prominent women in a variety of fields (including media, business and charitable organizations) as well as celebrities and sponsors.
In 1954, the broadcast brought a private awards ceremony to the public, thereby creating its own content and media coverage. Prior to this, the pageant was an event for privileged individuals who could come to Atlantic City after the summer rush, and who could afford the prestigious seats. Like other special events, including the Academy Awards, presidential inaugurations or the New Year’s Eve telecast, the live audience was composed of individuals whose schedules and payrolls permitted them to attend, even though the ceremony was of national importance. According to Morley, “National broadcasting creates a sense of unity and of corresponding boundaries around the nation, linking the peripheral to the center and turn previous exclusive social events into masse experiences and above all, it penetrates the domestic sphere linking the national public into the private lives of its citizens” (Morley 419).
As special event programming that was once only available through newsreels, the Miss America Pageant utilizes imagery to maintain its illusion of live-ness. The program features shots of the venue and the audience to remind the audience that they are guests at this event thereby inflating the importance of the pageant. According to Sarah Banet-Weiser, “What is instructive about the various strategies employed by the Miss America corporation to adapt their production to television is the recognition that what was happening onstage was the equivalent of a ‘news event’; identities were being crowned up there in front of the judges, and part of the self-production of the pageant was that it was, at its heart, a serious event” (Banet-Weiser 173). The illusion of the pageant as a national event is essential to its position in patriotic identity: all of the states are represented, and the representatives are elected (by a small panel of judges representing the region) based on her merits. The parade of states is reminiscent of the parade of nations in the Olympics, giving each community a chance to be recognized.
The pageant also employs a series of conventions that Morse ascribes to news programming including the importance of the anchor, the correspondents and acousmatic voice. Bert Parks hosted the Miss America Pageant from 1955 to 1979 and served as the trusted anchor of the program. Year after year, he performed as a mediator between the pageant and the audience. Attractive, amiable and humorous, he introduced the women and offered ‘live’ commentary regarding the proceedings. Bess Meyerson, a former Miss America, served as the ‘television host,’ she was situated apart from the onstage fray and spoke directly to the television audience. As the program became established in American culture, the television host was eliminated.
The introduction of the women is essential in the pageants proceedings. Originally, Bert Parks introduced the women from his exalted position on the side of the stage. For many, his presence defined the pageant in image and sound and Parks embodied the voiceovers. As the broadcast progressed, the women began to introduce themselves, offering a short summation of their history and hopes. After Parks’ departure, the self-introductions were pre-recorded, timed to synchronize perfectly with the contestant’s march past the judges. The acousmatic voice changed during the digital revolution of the mid to late nineties; no longer embodied in the event or television host, a distant computerized voice now introduces the contestants.
The idea of nationalism and national unity often depends on the live quality of the program. It is a time when individuals gather around the television, regardless of location or time, and collectively participate in a media event. Although a live broadcast is not necessary for national unity (e.g. final M.A.S.H. episode), the beauty pageant employs techniques of live-ness to encourage national idealism, whether or not the program is being broadcast live or is pre-recorded. An example of “continuity programming,” it appears and sounds live but more often is not (Bourdon). The introduction of video vignettes problematizes these issues. As an obligatory part of the program, they eliminate the illusion of live-ness but reinforce allusions to news programming, including news packages and pre-recorded segments.
The position of the camera also changes over time and this aspect is concurrent with the changes in the program towards a media event instead of a televised event. During the earlier broadcasts of Miss America, the camera was situated away from the stage in an attempt to distance the taping process from the event itself. The program emulated the prior newsreel footage of the pageant, filming the events from the perspective of the attending audience. The early broadcasts are filled with wide shots of the auditorium that reiterate the idea that the cameras were merely guests at this private function. According to Spiegel, this new space of television as a home theater “allowed people to draw a line between the public and the private sphere… or a line between the proscenium space where the spectacle took place and the reception space in which the audience observed the scene” (Spigel 220), encouraging viewers to feel like they were taking part in the public event. It was not until the late 60s that the action onstage was choreographed with the camera in mind. “The only time I really noticed a camera was we were waiting to have the crowning. I saw a television camera, and it was coming toward us, so I thought, ooh it’s…it’s time” (Lee Meriwether – Ades).
During its early years on television, the participants (hosts and contestants) did not look directly at the camera therefore reinforcing the idea of a special televised event. Directly addressing the camera became essential as the program became an event designed for television. Not only did it offer the audience at home a chance to really connect with the contestants, but according to Morse, looking directly into the character is the equivalent claim that the program is live (Morse). As the program progressed and incorporated additional edited segments, it was necessary to reiterate its live-ness. Even in 1976, when the NBC broadcast was pre-recorded, these traits were prevalent and intended to convince the audience that they were still participating in a live, nationwide event.
All of these techniques are used to create a cultural phenomenon. These conventions have assisted the program’s transition to a media event,” “a ceremony in real space staged for televisual transmission” (Morse 127); this is the defining quality of beauty pageants. In this transition, participants look directly at the camera and the design of the program caters to individuals ‘just tuning in’ by constantly reiterating the level of the pageant and how many women remain until the winner is announced. Recognizing the transient television audience and catering to their confusion defines the beauty pageant as a media event.
The beauty pageant (with or without television) has major effects on the identity of the nation. It offers women a model of female citizenship (Banet-Weiser) and informs us of our cultural ideas and conflicts (Niemark). The national broadcast allows these ideologies to be disseminated to a wide audience, allowing for what Banet-Weister calls, “economics of visibility;” television democratizes both the accessibility and availability of national identity and positions representational politics as the heart of national identity (Banet-Weiser). The role of broadcasting is to create “a link between the dispersed and disparate listeners and the symbolic heartland of national life, and of this role in promoting a sense of communal identity within its audience at both regional and national levels” (Morley 418). This phenomenon is repeated again and again in the Miss America Pageant, “How could this happen to a girl from Anytown, USA?” The beauty pageant promotes the ideology of America, that we are capable of anything, that “we’ve got… pluck” (Niemark), in the most non-threatening of ways, through the female body.
Most of the critical analyses of beauty pageants revolve around their effect on American women. By promoting an ideal woman, body type and ideals, beauty pageants create an unattainable goal for many of the women around the nation. The psychological effects of this are infinite. “All Miss Americas are produced and produce themselves as national bodies” (Banet-Weiser 179). The body featured by the beauty pageant is standardized according to height, weight, shape and maintenance. According to the Journal of Sex Research, the waist to hip ratios of Miss America winners (and Playboy centerfolds) varies between .68 and .72. Although the popular shape of women has changed over the decades, this ratio remains the same (Freese). For men and women, the expectation of an athletic body becomes the expectation of the nation; these women are disciplined and focused on the maintenance of their image, both physical and psychological, and this idealism, broadcast nationally through television, continues to affect the individual citizen and his or her expectations of themselves. Encoded as patriotic, the Miss America Pageant is decoded as an affront to the average American woman.
“Through the display of female bodies and the performance of a particular version of female subjectivity, the beauty pageant transforms a culture’s anxiety about itself – its stability as a coherent nation – into a spectacular reenactment and overcoming of that very anxiety” (Banet-Weiser 179). In Psychology Today, Jill Niemark outlines how Miss America helps define us as a nation and as American women, “Cinderella ought to come from the middle class and go to college; we are all equal but we love royalty; and superwoman is alive and well” (Niemark). With all of these expectations of the perfect American woman, generations of girls grew up wanting to be Miss America. This desire assists in the construction of a national identity.
The Miss America pageant is a media ritual; annually, families gather to watch the pageant and bond over beautiful women and patriotism. Although this has changed over the years and ratings have wavered, the idea of Miss America is still interwoven into our psyche as a nation. Ellis outlines the importance of routine and standardization in television broadcasting in order to ensure a captive audience (Ellis 276). The pageant is such an event; every second Saturday in September, millions of Americans gather around the television. It is part of our cultural citizenship; we discuss the contestants, rate them according to our own expectations of American beauty and bond with our families and other families around the nation.
This guaranteed audience of female consumers begs the question, how does the program denote that the Miss America Pageant is gender specific programming? Television programs can encourage a certain audience while discouraging undesirable audiences (Morley 423). In the Miss America Organization’s desperate attempt to remove the sexuality from the pageant, they have alienated the male viewers and concentrate exclusively on the women in the home as a target audience. In order to do this, sisterhood is employed as the overarching theme of the event. The women travel together over the entire week and no contestant is ever seen alone. Although accused of objectification for the masculine gaze, the program desperately attempts to eliminate any objectification of the female form. The presentation of women is the focal point of the televised beauty pageant. It established and continues to affect the manner by which bodies are fetishized in American culture. In the early years when the broadcast was still a televised event, the camera was distanced from the stage, and featured the body as a continuous entity. Each woman occupied the screen, either alone or accompanied by Bert Parks, allowing the viewer to appreciate the entire woman. Since the program transitioned to an event for television, the presentation of bodies has become segmented. Now women are viewed from multiple angles and the screen is often split between a close-up of the face and a full body shot, rarely does the camera focus on other body parts, maintaining the illusion of desexualized bodies. With the addition of video vignettes to the program, the television viewer sees even fewer bodies. The broadcast now features the contestant walking briefly in her bathing suit to a platform when the image cuts to a pre-recorded segment where she discusses her dreams, aspirations, thoughts and beliefs, thereby personifying the body.
Kracauer’s theory of the mass ornament is intimately involved in the process of desexualizing the female body. “One need only glance at the screen to learn that the ornaments are composed of thousands of bodies, sexless bodies in bathing suits” (Kracauer 76). The large musical numbers serve this function. Fifty bodies deftly move around the stage and become a separate entity, a massive performance number wherein the contestants are used as artistic building blocks. This aspect of the performance was integrated into the broadcast after the production was adapted for television transmission, which, like a Busby Berkeley musical, allowed for different camera angles to appreciate these formations. The camera can be positioned high above the stage, a perspective that is lost to the live audience member, or can be in the center of the stage, consumed by moving bodies and flashing smiles. “The mass movement by the girls… take place in a vacuum; they are a linear system that no longer has any erotic meaning but at best points to the locus of the erotic” (Kracauer 77). The importance of the large musical numbers cannot be ignored, despite the program’s attention to individual bodies.
The pageant insists on principles of female scholarship and sisterhood despite retaining parade of female bodies and the swimsuit competition in order to maintain its traditional appeal. The video vignettes serve to personify the contestants and emphasize their internal qualities while they strut their external qualities for the judges. The pageant is less of a strip show and more of a fashion show (O’Sullivan) and similar to a wedding, the emphasis is placed on the style of the affair. Rabinovitz details the importance and success of weddings in soap opera television and emphasizes the spectacles ability to draw together domestic audiences (Rabinovitz). Evening gowns, hairstyles, shoes, talent, and most recently the platform, a civic activity to which the contestant has dedicated herself, overshadow the bodies. These wholesome attributes serve to desexualize the pageant, once again offering the women as anything but sexual objects. By promoting sisterhood over sexuality, the pageant maintains an image of upscale American womanhood and confuses the ideas of exploitation and objectification.
The audience of the pageant is essential to its success as a national event and as a commercial powerhouse. It is one of the most spectacular examples of commercialism disguised as Americanism, “The women who participate in BP pose as particular commodities; they position their bodies and their personalities to ‘sell’ and idealized version of American citizenship and American life. Television, and the way it both produces and commodifies difference, similarities, conflicts, and affiliations, allows us to ascribe meaning and substance based on an interpretation of the visual” (Banet-Weiser 175). The women are used to sell products for the sponsors despite the organization’s detached approach from the commodity process. They are supposedly representatives of their regions, once again confusing nationalism and consumerism.
The pageant originated as a marketing ploy and continues to be even into the new millennium. The pageant helped launch an American trend, using women to sell products. . The first bathing revue promised thousands of the nation’s most beautiful women and drew audiences to the spectacle. After the Miss America Organization switched to non-profit status, all of the funding for the pageant came solely from its sponsors. Toni Beauty Products (a division of Gillette), Campbell’s Soup and Kellogg’s were among the first to sponsor the television broadcast. Other featured products include house wares or beauty products, reinforcing the idea that the pageant’s target audience is composed mainly of women, mothers and homemakers.
The role of the pageant as an endorsement for local businesses is reinforced by the 1974 pre-edited broadcast of the Miss USA Pageant, located in “beautiful Niagara Falls.” The program is essentially a video promoting the tourist attractions of the host city. The contestants are treated to an extensive vacation, exploring the history and beauty of the Falls, and are filmed during all of their excursions. The video features beautiful women participating in historical activities around Niagara including the annual tug of war between the Canadian and American police forces. It is an amazing piece of marketing and nationalism all rolled up into 51 beautiful packages. “The Pageant is this example where you can be sort of nationalistic and patriotic and pro American and get to see some “T and A” all in the same event” (Tricia Rose – Ades).
The tourism video has become an integral part of the beauty pageant; often the contestants travel through the pageant’s hometown, and are filmed while visiting the premiere tourist attractions. Over the years, the Miss America Pageant has frequented multiple venues including Atlantic City, Madison Square Garden in New York City and Orlando. In Atlantic City, the women enjoy time on the boardwalk or on the beach, shop in upscale stores and playfully gamble in the nicer casinos. In Orlando, the contestants cavorted through Disneyworld, participating in a blatant tourism video featuring rides, games and Mickey Mouse. Broadcast on ABC, Disney was able to endorse its other media holdings during the program in a magnificent blend of nationalism and commercialism.
The event is dependent upon the participation of the sponsors; endorsements are integrated into the program. One year, Lucky Brand Jeans, a popular casual clothing company, gave a free pair of jeans to all of the contestants. The cameras followed the women as they ransacked the store and filled the dressing rooms. This product placement, although a recurring phenomenon in general television programming, has always been a part of the beauty pageant’s sponsorship. In the earlier broadcasts, contestants were used to endorse products leading into the commercial breaks. Former Miss Americas informed their constituencies that Toni beauty products helped her maintain that soft, luxurious hair before a commercial break. The importance of sponsors to the pageant was confirmed in 1984 with the Vanessa Williams scandal:
The sponsors were waiting on the sidelines. We had received a warning that if we didn’t handle this right, it didn’t turn out right, they were going to pull out. If they pulled out at the end of July, there would have been no money and no Miss American pageant in 1984. And there would not be a Miss America pageant today. That’s how close we came. (Leonard Horn; former MAO CEO – Ades)
The pageant’s dependency on sponsorship and ratings came to a head in 2004 when ABC decided not to renew its contract to broadcast the Miss America Pageant after receiving a record low of 9.8 million viewers from a record high of 33 million in 1988 (Chicago Sun Times). Over the years, Miss America’s audience has been dwindling despite a solid fan base of women. Multiple reasons have been offered for this change: from the beginning, many felt that the pageant was out of step with American culture. This was obvious during the Women’s movement of the 1960s. Despite being protested and picketed, the pageant refused to change. Instead, lip service was paid to the movement with such musical numbers as “Call me Ms.” and the introduction of prominent female judges including the president of the National Alliance of Businesswomen and internationally renowned musicians, dancers and actresses.
The 2004 broadcast also saw the elimination of the talent competition during the finals. This portion of the pageant was originally intended to personify the women and prove that they had more to offer than simply good looks and perfect figures. Coupled with the low ratings and its waning cultural significance, the pageant was forced to reduce its production budget and only included a video montage of the finalists performing earlier in the week. It seems unusual that the Miss America Organization would remove this portion without prior explanation. When the organizers considered eliminating the swimsuit competition in the eighties, millions of viewers voted to retain the tradition. In the case of the talent competition, there was no such audience participation. The choice to eliminate this aspect of the pageant has two implications: (1) the contestants are no longer seen as sex objects due to the pageant’s marketing over the past seventy years and new adaptations including video vignettes and the platform, and (2) the integrity of the pageant is no longer an issue among the organizers, only ratings.
In our digital age, audience involvement has become the life preserver of the Miss America Pageant. The program now offers such gimmicks as the “call in vote,” (television viewers participate in the final vote), simultaneous online polls, and an instant celebrity judge contest where one lucky Miss America fan was selected to judge the pageant. Year after year, the organizers try to obtain viewers and fail. Ratings are an essential component of any television show and Miss America’s inability to attract viewers has drastically affected the pageant’s place in culture.
The digital revolution has also affected the pageant’s production. Audience expectations have changed over the past twenty years and the initial conventions of the pageant are no longer necessary to maintain or inform viewers. The role of the television host was revived in the 1980s after an increase in ratings due to the Williams scandal. This new audience, fascinated by the construction of beauty pageants and intrigued by their overt hypocrisy coupled with changing video techniques including backstage interviews, required an intermediary. A former Miss America was often hired as the correspondent-like television host; she was responsible for describing the processes of preparation, voting and coronation as well as invite the viewer to keep score at home, encouraging interactivity to maintain viewers. Occasionally, the pageant has chosen to immediately post the judge’s scores as they cross the stage, allowing the audience at home to interact with the entire procedure.
The overall style of the broadcast has also adapted to meet an increased televisual demand for fast paced editing and flashy computer graphics. Different segments of the show are delineated by an intensely complicated, yet very brief, digital animation. The contestants are introduced by a detailed computerized readout of their histories and statistics and their names are surrounded by abstract moving figures throughout the program. The pageant has felt the effects of cable television and MTV and utilizes the basic techniques established by music videos and American commercials in order to attract and maintain their audience.
On a global level, beauty pageants maintain the same ability to bring together people worldwide. The 2004 Miss World telecast was ranked third in viewing audience, behind the World Cup and the Olympics. The pageant’s use of “parade of states” echoes the Olympics “parade of nations,” a point in the program symbolizing the individuality and the similarity of the regions involved. Each woman serves as a representative and the show’s “parade” emphasizes the unity and cooperation. The beauty pageant, although considered an American phenomenon, is widely successful in a variety of markets. Women from all over the world compete in beauty pageants, repeating the nationalistic and commercial qualities that I have outlined with respect to the Miss America Pageant.
“Beauty pageants showcase values concepts and behavior that exist at the center of a group’s sense of itself and exhibit values of morality gender and place” (Cohen 2). Local beauty pageants are necessary to maintain the ideal local culture in global televised world. America’s ability to culturally dominate other communities has become a touchstone of globalization. American movies, television, music and images saturate world markets and encourage a shift it what is considered normal. Extensive work has been, and continues to be, conducted into the phenomenon of beauty pageants across the world. In an analysis of Miss Sweden, Katarina Mattsson charts Miss Sweden as a “’seismograph’ of societal change” (Mattsson). Most recently, Indian beauty pageants have been at the forefront of this discussion due to the remarkable influence of American beauty standards on Indian women. Theorists including Radhika Parameswaran and Andrew Russell have explored how the expectations of Indian women are shifting with American imperialism. Despite the pageant’s emphasis on nationalism and culture, the women are expected to be tall, slim and light skinned.
Feminists and cultural theorists around the world regularly protest the Miss World pageant. Its façade of female scholarship and nationalism is not enough to convince communities of its intentions. After Miss Nigeria took the crown (the first black African to do so), her predominantly Muslim home country volunteered to host the event in 2002. A local newspaper, ThisDay, published an article stating, “the Prophet Mohammed would probably have chosen to marry one of the contestants if he had witnessed the beauty pageant” (BBC News 2002). The ensuing riot was the worst in Miss World history; thousands of human rights advocates stormed the event, protesting the country’s treatment of women. Over a dozen were killed and hundreds injured. The contestants were immediately evacuated from the country and the contest was relocated to London.
Although beauty pageants seem to affect the same cultural sensibilities around the world, fostering protests against sexism, racism, American imperialism and commercialism, the reception of beauty pageants varies drastically from country to country. In Russell’s analysis, “Miss World Comes to India,” he describes the experience of watching the program with a young, well-educated couple of the bourgeoning middle class. For them, it is welcomed as a glamorous fantasy (Russell 12).
Events such as the Miss World Pageant are broadcast globally and the differences in audience reception are crucial to their ratings overseas. From a television perspective, the beauty pageant is relatively cheap to produce, most of the costs are absorbed by the organization itself, but in order to guarantee ratings worldwide, the program must adhere to Olson’s theory of transparency, “any textual apparatus that allows audiences to project indigenous values, beliefs, rites, and rituals into imported media” (Olson 114). The pageant functions as a celebration of the host country’s culture, which is prominently featured in the onstage performances and regional tourist montages, but must possess global appeal in order to retain the largest audience.
The relative popularity of the Miss World Pageant as compared to the Miss America Pageant problematizes the beauty pageant as an American phenomenon. The conventions utilized by the Miss World broadcast are taken directly from the Miss America Pageant and are easily understood by a global audience. Although it has been theorized that there is no global public sphere (Sparks 144), America’s cultural trendsetting (read: imperialism) through the Miss America Pageant creates a new global environment that allows audiences worldwide to understand, appreciate, and participate in the Miss World Pageant. Promoting an ideology of diversity, peaceful integration and international beauty, the global beauty pageant “proves to be a remarkably effective domain to market ethnicity and commodify its diversity” (Banet-Weiser 175). A global beauty pageant broadcast worldwide offers a captive global audience delivers billions of consumers with different ideologies but similar interests. This, in my pessimistic opinion, creates a global public sphere.
The Miss America Pageant has come a long way since its first days as a bathing beauty contest on the boardwalk of Atlantic City. Its place in American (and global) culture has been confirmed through decades of successful broadcasts and offshoot programs. Earlier this year, two cable networks recognized the appeal of beauty pageants: Oxygen, Oprah’s network for women, is producing a male pageant that features Fabio leading twelve contestants through a “romance boot camp” and G4, a gaming network, introduced a digital pageant where the “curviest and deadliest video game characters compete” (Bianculli).
The beauty pageant continues to hybridize with other television genres and most recently touts a love affair with reality television. As some of the earliest reality television, beauty pageants feature real women with real life issues, beyond gluing their bathing suits and rubbing their teeth with Vaseline. Audiences become interested in their lives, if only for two hours, and feel a connection to these women. Coupled with our postmodern self-reflexivity, programs that emphasize beauty over the other pageant conventions have become widely popular. Shows such as Fox’s The Swan and ABC’s Extreme Makeover take the social effects of beauty pageants to another level and offer individuals who are psychologically affected by America’s romance with ideal beauty a chance to suffer at its hands for the amusement of millions of viewers.
Many of society’s ills have been attributed to the televised beauty pageant but its role in television history remains unquestioned. Miss America created a genre of television that has been co-opted and utilized by every possible industry; it continues to draw paying customers to a variety of products using the guaranteed gimmick of beautiful women. Like a female version of the Superbowl, the beauty pageant brings together disparate audiences in a massive display of commercialism, nationalism and physicality. Unfortunately, Miss America cannot charge $2.5 million for a thirty-second commercial, despite its position as an arbiter of national beauty. Even with sagging ratings, the pageant will not fade from American sensibilities; rather, it will be forced to change both its representation of culture and its method of disseminating it. Digital technologies continue to reduce the cost of global broadcasting while expanding the opportunities for interpretation. Pretty women will always attract consumers and, like the contestants themselves, it is now up to the beauty pageants to best display their assets.
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