Fresh scandals have resulted in the stripping of yet more American beauty queens, as their titles and tiaras are taken away for behaviour unbecoming ambassadors of American youth and beauty. Most recently it was Katie Rees who was dethroned as Miss Nevada, after photos of her emulating Janet Jackson at a Tampa party surreptitiously surfaced in the media. The bad news came only days after Tara Conner, the reigning Miss USA, managed to retain her tiara, despite tabloid allegations of sexual promiscuity and of drinking in Manhattan nightclubs prior to her 21st birthday. This rich vein of scandal broke only weeks before the Miss America pageant was due to be broadcast live from Las Vegas. The upshot of all this carefully constructed publicity is that Miss Connor will indeed pass on her crown and title to her successor at the Miss USA contest in April, that is if she successfully completes rehab, although sadly not to Miss Rees, who is destined to be cashing in on her new found celebrity in the traditional way.
Miss Katie Rees’ sudden fall from American grace and recorded loss of innocence was the third scandal to hit Mr. Trump’s pageant empire within a long week. Mothers Against Drunk Driving dropped Miss Teen USA Katie Blair as its spokeswoman after the young teen was espied clubbing with Miss Conner by some helpful neocon. Fortunately for Miss Rees, there is more money to be found on the ‘other side’, and her risqué Tampa party audition has already landed her a $multi-million contract hosting a revival of the sexually charged Beacher's Madhouse at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Vegas. Miss Rees has however, according to her agent, presently declined offers to appear naked for Girls Gone Wild and Playboy. However, Playboy have reportedly also expressed an interest in featuring Miss Tara Conner on their front cover, although it was Mr. Trump, rather than Miss Conner herself who informed the press that he was ‘mulling the matter over’. To both the acolytes and opponents of the beauty pageant, such revelations merely serve as conformation of what they had long believed - sex and the beauty contest are intimate bed partners.
Scandal is nothing new to the American beauty pageant, as the public façade of many past torch bearers has gone up in flames under the intense glare of the media. Marjorie Wallace (Miss World 1973) was cast from her throne after only four months of her reign for ‘dating’ infamous celebrities who included soccer star George Best and singer Tom Jones. Miss Wallace was charged with bringing the Miss World title into disrepute, but that was later Trumped by the antics of Miss Vanessa L. Williams, the first ‘black’ winner of the Miss America pageant. Following her 1984 success, Miss Williams was ultimately forced to resign when nude images of her surfaced in Penthouse magazine, an unfortunate turn of events given the prevailing pogrom against pornography and declining moral values of the Reagan era. Values may have been relaxed since, although not sufficiently to avert Danielle Lloyd (Miss Great Britain 2006) from being stripped of her title only last November after it was revealed that she had not only posed nude for Playboy, but also that she had been ‘dating’ one of the judges, football icon Teddy Sheringham, at the time of the contest. Pageant judges sleeping with the contestants - surely not?
As though sufficient anger had not already been stirred up within feminist ranks by the promotion of the televised beauty pageant, recent revelations will have done little to help sleeping dogs lie. Big business in the late 20th Century, beauty pageants routinely antagonised the feminist movement by parading young women in scant attire for the pleasure of the judges. Beauty pageants are a living contradiction in that they expect young women to appear alluring and available on stage, yet to be virtuous in both their private and public lives so as to avoid embarrassing the judges or the pageant organisers. Given that these attractive young women often do not enter the main pageants until their early twenties, it does seem a little unrealistic to expect them to remain chaste, unmarried, and sexually alluring for so much of their youth. After all, the campaign trail of an aspiring Miss World contestant is perhaps not as becoming to a life of virtue and innocence as a convent or a girls’ boarding school.
The feminists finally breached the walls of capital interest after generations of campaigning when the BBC finally announced in 1984 that it would stop televising beauty pageants. ITV followed suit several years later, although this had more to do with a change in the commercial climate than to issues of morality. Viewing audiences had collapsed, demonstrations had turned the pageants into a security nightmare, and the widespread advent of pornography provided the masses with a plentiful supply of naked women on demand. The beauty pageant has since provided ammunition for hit comedies such as ‘Miss Congeniality’, ‘Drop Dead Gorgeous’, and ‘Little Miss Sunshine’, aside from triggering the deadly religious riots of 2002 in Nigeria. Now it would seem that only Las Vegas provides both a suitable setting and box office draw for the national beauty pageant, although a recent casting call on Craig’s List suggests that they are struggling to fill the Pageant seats even in Sin City. A recent ad on Craig’s List titled ‘Miss America Pageant Seat Fillers NEEDED!’, posted on the 29th of January 2007 by ‘casting@vegas-casting.com’, was in essence a casting call for five hundred ‘seat fillers’ for the live Miss America 2007 Pageant. In case you were wondering, the ad went on to explain precisely what ‘seat fillers’ are. Their function is to ‘fill the empty seats in the audience so that it looks good on camera for the live TV show’. Although unpaid, seat fillers ‘have the opportunity to sit in areas of the TV show where the VIPs and celebrities are’ and to win a raffle prize. Aside from questioning the enduring appeal of the live pageant, although most modern viewers now prefer to watch pre-recorded highlights, this ad suggests that the Pageant’s loss of innocence and the widespread availability of more tangible content within modern ‘reality shows’ has taken much of the gloss and the shine from what was once the nation’s favourite viewing pastime.
Cynics might argue that the publicity stemming from public scandal can only inject new life into a tired old media horse. The Miss America pageant is presently being ostensibly rebranded with a ‘reality TV style’ makeover, text message voting by viewers, and on demand off-peak viewing. Perhaps a fresh public perception that the Miss World title is in reality a fully paid up ticket into a world of high society parties, sex and travel might be just the elixir the ratings spin doctor ordered? All the recent scandal and ‘brooh hah hah’ neatly coincided with the Miss America pageant which aired in January. Given that Mr.Trump’s Miss USA pageant’s ratings were the second worst ever in April 2006, the scandal amounts to a priceless free publicity coup which amassed almost two million Google links within a month.
So, at least we now know that beauty pageant contestants are sexually available, alluring, and know how to please the judges as well as the cameras. Caught up in a whirlwind of press, emotion, glamour and opportunity, many of these sexually active young women succumb to temptation and will take the money to appear nude in Penthouse or Playboy. With such riches and exposure at stake, such behaviour is not altogether unsurprising given that many of these young women, often from modest or disadvantaged backgrounds, invest or borrow large sums to enter such pageants. Aspiring contestants spend heavily on their appearance in the hope of becoming a beauty queen and of commanding multi-million dollar contracts. Understandably with so much at stake many young women will do almost anything to please their judges and the pageant owners. Quite what this entails remains unclear - Mr. Sheringham?
