She was crowned last Sunday evening, an event you may have missed unless you paid $99 to watch it streamed on WatchMissAmerica.com. Because, after 103 years, the Miss America Pageant has fallen so far out of favor the broadcast networks wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot cable.
But that’s sort of a shame, because Sunday’s was a screen shot of how the perceptions of what a young woman could, or should, be in the 103 years since the pageant’s birth as the “Bathing Beauty Revue” have changed.
Or maybe that’s just something that struck me because in 1979 I was assigned by my newspaper to cover the pageant when a local young woman, Sher Patrick, was the Miss Ohio representative.
Part of my assignment required sitting at the edge of the runway watching the contestants walk by wearing their smiles, their high heels and their bathing suits, some of which allegedly were padded in strategic places. When the talent portion took place, we sat there as the contestants returned to sing, tap dance, play the piano or pray for world peace.
Miss Ohio’s talent was belly dancing.
In the middle of her performance, I heard grumbling from the reporter next to me.
“What’s the problem?” I inquired.
“Look at what that girl’s doing up there,” he said.
“What?”
“She’s doing a hoochie coochie dance.”
“It’s not hoochie coochie,” I replied. “It’s a traditional Middle Eastern performance. An ethnic thing.” But he wasn’t convinced. His opinion apparently was that young women shouldn’t display their navels. Or maybe even have them.
When I reported the next day in my column how provincial that struck me, I got a letter from reader that said,” “Dear D.L.: Surely you jest. Let me give you an anatomy lesson. The hip bone connected to the thigh bone, equals the erotic zone. Would you want your daughter to put on such a public (and pubic) display?” (Signed): “A past reader of DL Stewart.” For the record, my daughter never put on a public, or pubic, display. She just became a firefighter and EMT who saved lives, maybe including some of whom were offended by belly dancing.
And the Miss America pageant no longer is a bathing beauty revue.
Because this is the era of Barbie. Of Taylor Swift. And of US air force 2nd Lt. Madison Marsh.
So, as she wrote Monday on Instagram: “Here’s to showing the world that women can do anything.”
Contact this columnist at dlstew_2000@yahoo.com.
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