Less than two weeks before Election Day 2004, the ABC
television network cancelled Miss America. Fifty years after it
premiered on national TV, the famous "beauty pageant" has fallen on
hard times. Last month, the annual show drew just 9.8 million
viewers, the smallest audience ever.
"The pageant has changed, but not for the better," commented an
editorial in a New Jersey newspaper, the Asbury Park Press.
"Eliminating most of the talent portion of the competition from this
year's broadcast was a mistake. Trotting the contestants out in
string bikinis rather than one-piece suits probably did more to
alienate traditional viewers than attract new ones."
Despite this year's modernizing make-over, the Miss America
pageant is a throwback to the 1950s, the decade that launched it
onto the nation's TV screens -- an era when sexism was inseparable
from supposed Americanism. Women were reduced to competitors in
bathing suits who could sing and flash their shiny white teeth while
they briefly made conversation. Perhaps subtly but pervasively, the
spectacle was an exercise in humiliation.
These days, we shouldn't burn a lot of calories patting
ourselves on the back. In 2004, television routinely features a
steady flow of rigid gender roles -- as a close look at an array of
commercials attests -- and the use of women's bodies to sell
products is standard media operating procedure.
Throughout our society, there are plenty more options for women
today, professionally and personally. But the media images of
females are still heavily slanted by stereotypes. Meanwhile, in the
workaday world, women receive just 76 cents for every dollar paid to
men for comparable jobs. We have a long way to go before there can
be any credible claims of social equality.
As reflected in the viewer ratings, the concept of Miss America
has gone out of fashion. In contrast, the networks devote countless
hours to covering what we might call the Mr. America pageant -- also
known as the presidential campaign.
While this country has become a good deal more skeptical about
the mythic allures of Miss America, the news media and the nation as
a whole are still boxed in by the Mr. America extravaganza. During
thousands of public appearances, presidential candidates pose, preen
and posture, trying to measure up to our images of what and who the
man in the Oval Office should be. And the media evaluations often
seem scarcely more sophisticated or discerning than the retrograde
judges who assign points according to arbitrary standards of
physical proportions and womanly poise.
They're polar opposites -- an inconsequential Miss America
contest and a momentous presidential contest -- yet political
journalists, especially the ones on television, often lapse into
reviewing debate performances and stump speeches on the basis of
little more than style. Reporters and pundits are apt to applaud
well-executed spin without reference to the factual basis or wisdom
of the assertions.
We may scoff at the imagery of Miss America, with her regal
cape and glittering crown. And it will certainly be a step forward
if the pageant can't find a major network next year to air the retro
show.
But for half a century, few people had reason to care exactly
who became Miss America. Ever since the 1950s, however, each battle
to win the presidency has been more about television than the one
before. Candidate performances in front of TV cameras -- and how
journalists characterize those appearances -- have assumed
ever-greater importance in the nation's presidential selection
process.
Ordinarily, as a practical matter, the game of political drama
merely requires that someone play a passable version of a wise
president on television. What we see on the screen are the pretenses
of a man who tries to follow a script written to fit the public's
fondest image of Mr. America. The gaps between televised appearances
and real-world realities have never been more profound than the
abyss between George W. Bush's favorite televised personas and the
consequences of his presidential reign. It may soon be this
president's misfortune that most voters have seen through the poses
of a pleasant TV performer.
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Norman Solomon is co-author, with Reese Erlich, of "Target Iraq:
What the News Media Didn't Tell You." His columns and other writings
can be found at
www.normansolomon.com.
