beauty pageants and television: a perfect marriage

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.

read the entire paper here:

Television Conventions and Beauty Pageant Ideology

WARNING: the paper is 25 double-spaced pages. the first third is the history of beauty pageants, the rest describes how television conventions assist in the beauty pageants promotion of nationalism, commericalism and sisterhood while desexualizing the pageant to maintain its pure untarnished image (i still love you vanessa williams).