Whether Three Items Really Constitutes a Trend (SWWC, vol 4, issue 11)
Hello!
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One of the first YA books I got was Just the Beginning, by Betty Miles. It's the kind of book that is an unselfconscious time capsule of its era, so perfectly Carter-era 1970s in its optimism about women's progress, I almost want to cry when I think about it. To illustrate the bonds between heroine Catherine and her three besties, Miles writes a scene where the four girls watch the Miss America pageant and make fun of it.
As someone growing up in the south, the idea that pageants were not aspirational but comical was mind-blowing. The message we all got in my hometown was that pageant girls were considered to be doing girlhood -- or womanhood -- right: They were beautiful without being erotic or exotic, they were talented without being unnervingly temperamental or selfish about their gifts, they were accomplished in a way that never called out structural bias or threatened a status quo.
Even as an undergraduate at a fairly rigorous engineering school, the outsized power of pageants lingered: it was telling that in the 1990s, Virginia Tech was still listing Kylene Barker (Miss America 1976) as an alumna but not keeping an eye on rising media star Hoda Kotb. And in my junior year, when comm major Nancy Glisson was named Miss Virginia, it was a big deal.
Naturally, I worked out my extremely mixed feelings about pageants and gender roles by watching the Miss America pageant and heckling it mercilessly. But as the 1990s turned into the 2000s, I wondered, "How on Earth is this going to last?" And ... it hasn't.
Last year, former Miss America CEO Sam Haskell was ousted in the wake of people learning that a stone-cold sexist was running an organization ostensibly devoted to giving young women "scholarship opportunities," Earlier this year, a new Miss America board comprised of former pageant winners and meant to provide post-scandal governance imploded; in the summer, former Miss America and current Fox News personality Gretchen Carlson got into an extremely public spat with Miss America 2018 Cara Mund; this was followed up by an open revolt against Carlson by 46 of the 51 pageant organizations that support the national pageant.
The Miss America mishegoss reminds me of how, a few weeks ago, everyone noticed that Victoria's Secret is still under the impression women are commodities to be gift-wrapped for consumption. There have since been the inevitable analyses pointing out that lingerie companies touting feel-good body positivity or inclusiveness aren't doing it because 2018 means the year of woke underwear. And it's good to remember that even if a marketing message is now aimed at making you like yourself, it still exists to sell you stuff. But a larger point remains: the type of womanhood Victoria's Secret sells is a lot like Miss America. It's about appearance over function, that appearance is meant to remind the woman that her value rests in how others regard her, and the aesthetics are carefully calibrated to make sure women are never threatening.
And that brings us to the news that USA Gymnastics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. This is largely seen as legal maneuvering since the organization's about to be buried under legal settlements, and you'll recall those legal settlements are the result of the organization sheltering a child abuser for decades, to the point where it knowingly hid or destroyed evidence. (Note that Michigan State University, which also covered for a child abuser for decades, and the U.S. Olympic Committee are getting hit with suits too.)
Gymnastics is one of those sports that's not really treated like a sport in mass media. I am of an age where I can recall the 1996 Olympics coverage, where John Tesh characterized a group of elite athletes as "little girls dancing for gold in the night." In addition to sounding like a really bad follow-up to Tina Turner's "Private Dancer" (a dancer for money/ and any old music will doooooo ...), it's also a way to dismiss a group of competitive sportswomen as decorative entertainment.
But this year, those little-girls-who-danced-for-gold filed into a courtroom and nailed both their abuser and his enabling organization. (And they're continuing to move the needle away from "pretty" and toward "powerful" as they run, tumble and vault for gold.)
If 2017 was the year #metoo began to affect how men treated women, 2018 might be seen as the year when women began reckoning with how the world treated them. It's notable that three entities which used to define and rigorously enforce femininity -- USA Gymnastics, Victoria's Secret and the Miss America pageant organization -- have all struggled this year. It's striking that their struggles are rooted in the very people they policed. And it's worth pointing out that perhaps any or all of these woes could have been prevented if these organizations had bothered listening to women all along.
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Your pop culture recommendation: After writing about Miss America, how could I not remind you of the slyly funny 1999 movie Drop Dead Gorgeous? Allison Janney's performance in the movie is reason enough to watch it -- her unrepentant glee during a funeral scene is just delightful -- but Nora Dunn as a cackling pageant official is another good reason to tune in. IMDB tells me it's only available via disc but I swear it's on cable enough for you to set a search up in your DVR.
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