Well, swimsuits are history for Miss America, and reactions to this news by many conservatives reveals more than I wanted to see.
Twenty years ago, social conservatives were crusading against pornography and sexual objectification. They would have cheered if the nation’s largest beauty pageant eliminated its bikini competition.
Recently, Miss America chair Gretchen Carlson announced that her pageant is scrapping its swimsuit segment. Now, she says, they’ll be judged wholly on who they are, not how they look.
Of course, since its beginning, the #MeToo awareness campaign has elicited some strange reversals. Some liberals have abandoned the idea that showing skin equals empowerment. After decades of fighting to normalize skimpy attire in the name of women’s liberation, there’s been a shocking realization that it was mostly men, not women, who liked to see ladies on stage in little more than their underwear.
And in another bizarre reversal, a writer at the National Review lamented the end of Miss America’s bikini contest, saying – and I quote – “I like looking at really beautiful women, including when they wear bikinis.”