Miss America Argumentative Essay

The bright lights are shining, the music is blaring, and the picture-perfect pageant contestants are strutting down the runway in their bikinis, with their bronzed skin looking flawless, and their hair and makeup perfectly done-the annual Miss America pageant. The Miss America pageant is the largest scholarship opportunity available for American women ages 26 and up. There is a lot at stake for the competitors, and participating in the pageant can change their lives. Over forty million dollars are donated to pageant competitors annually for scholarships. The competitors spend months getting ready-exercising, dieting, preparing for interviews, and planning their outfits to wear. However, the Miss America pageant is sexist because it forces women

Women are only judged upon their bodies and how they carry themselves, with very little indication of how much they deserve a scholarship. They are not truly radiating confidence in themselves because they are covering themselves behind a mask of the judges’ preferences. They answer one question and are in a short interview, and most answers are rehearsed for the interview. Of course, they are mostly judged in the bikini competition-where they are half naked-and most overall pageant winners have won that swimsuit portion. A huge scholarship should not have the requirement of parading around in a bikini and looking perfect in a bikini or evening gown, when there is no such thing as a perfect body. There is little one can understand about a woman’s confidence from pageant experience. She may act as confident as possible-when she is quite insecure-and the bikini contest does nothing for the insecure women except making them hyper-uncomfortable. Women strive to attain these unattainable bodies and must use as many products as possible to look “perfect” to win the money for college, grad school, student loans, etc. Copious amounts of hairspray, fake tanning, fake teeth, makeup, spandex, tape, and more materials are used to attain the “perfect body”. Adding on layers of trash onto a body does not

Most pageant winners over time have mostly been white, and women of color have not always gotten the chance to even win for their state. Although racism has been our reality since the beginning of time, the targeting of minority women has largely increased. White women have many more opportunities than women of color. Modern racism and stereotypical gender roles play a large part in prejudice against women of color today. There is also a ridiculous lack of support for policies that intend to help women-especially women of color (Hall, Hunter, J-Aikin, Swim 1995). In order to win the contest, women require the validation of their attractiveness and not even validating their beauty for themselves. The women seek the judges’ approval of their bodies and their “confidence and/or poise” while denying that they are beautiful no matter how they express and reveal themselves to the world. The winners of the pageants fit that very narrow definition of beauty, and the ones who do not win believe that they are not good enough, when really, everyone is beautiful. Only the competitors that fit that narrow definition benefited with the scholarship. The competition creates titles and pressure, and it makes the other competitors seem illegitimate or unworthy, when they are worthy of a scholarship. The issue with the pageant’s notion of a beauty queen is that beauty has almost nothing to do with outward attractiveness.