For you and me, the concept of beauty pageants is tired, outdated and for all intents and purposes, a little bit embarassing.
For some people though, beauty pageants are life. Take Venezuela for instance where girls pay thousands of dollars for plastic surgery in the hope they might compete in the country's biggest media event of the year - and for some, gain a ticket out of the poverty stricken slums (check out this excellently mad Billie JD Porter BBC3 doc for proof). In America and Europe though, there's less interest these days. In it's heyday, the Miss America televised final used to garner 27 million viewers. This year, it grazed the 7 million mark.
The reason behind it's decline is obvious, a female-only competition that contains a round where women are judged on their swimsuit bodies is offensive on a silly number of levels. Also, let's not forget that the Miss USA (not Miss America) and Miss Universe franchise is owned in part by hate-spewing douchebag potential presidential candidate Donald Trump.
But, could the Miss America pageant be fighting back? Last week, the competition gave a long overdue apology to Vanessa Williams (32 years late to be precise) for forcing her to resign as the 1984 winner after private nude photos of the actress surfaced. The photos were later published in Penthouse magazine after Playboy turned them down with Hugh Hefner stating, 'The single victim in all of this was the young woman herself, whose right to make this decision was taken away from her.' This year, post apology, Vanessa served as head judge.
But it was two of the contestants that got the public really talking. For years, the stereotypical talents displayed by contestants have been dances, vocal performances and baton twirling. Last year's winner Kira Kazantsev sang Pharrell's Happy while doing that cup thing that Anna Kendrick does in *Pitch Perfect * (which is all fairness is bloody hard, as is singing Happy without crying from sheer desparation at the amount of times you've been forced to listen to it). This year though, Miss Colorado and Miss Vermont decided to take their talent performance on a different route.
The first was Kelley Johnson from Colorado who used her alotted time to deliver a monologue on what her job as a nurse entailed. Dress in baggy scrubs, she talked about the patient that reminded her why she became a nurse in the first place. 'Mine was Joe' she said. 'Joe was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's.' Joe had night terrors and often, Kelley would sit with him to help him calm down. The two became friends although Kelley was pretty down on herself for being, as she put it, 'just a nurse'. One particularly difficult night, Joe said 'Nurse Kelley. You are not just a nurse, you are MY nurse and you have changed my life because you've cared about me.' Kelley went on to say; 'Patients are people with family and friends and I don't want to be a nurse that ever pretends. You are not a room number and a diagnosis when you are in the hospital, you are a person. And that is why I will never be "just a nurse".'
Pretty moving stuff eh? Next came Alayna Westcom from Vermont who, as well as having degree in forensic science, now works as a medical examiner and medical technologist. She decided to show off her science background onstage. 'Science is all around us,' She said. 'It can be quite fun and useful.' She then went on to demonstrate 'The catalytic decomposition of hydrogen peroxide' which means she mixed potassium iodine with hydrogen peroxide (I'm writing this like I've got a monkeys what any of it means) together in a beaker and they exploded in a big foamy mess. She's basically that chemistry teacher you had at school who was your favourite because he put making cool things happen with dangerous substances ahead of his (and your) personal safety.
Plenty of people have found time to be sniffy about these two contestants; the women on The View (America's more catty version of Loose Women) are under fire for making fun of Kelley for wearing a stethoscope around her neck when she's not a doctor (DID YOU HEAR THE SPEECH LADIES). Another website stated that whilst the talents were a refreshing change, 'A few foaming beakers wouldn’t cut it at a TED conference'.
Being sniffy solves nothing. As problematic as people are finding these talent displays; they are not for strong, grown-up liberal women. We KNOW women can be scientists, and that nursing is a hard job that deserves no end of praise. No, instead, these talents were for the little girls who love pageantry. The little girls who now might think twice about enrolling in that science class and the little girls that might now aspire to be a nurse, rather than a Kardashian. Yes, we can all agree that the pageant system is problematic, but don't knock those who are trying to do good within it.
Like this? Then you might also be interested in:
15 Life Lessons We’ve Learned From Drop Dead Gorgeous, 15 Years On
A Beauty Queen Is On The Run With £60k Tiara After Being Forced To Get A Boob Job** **
Follow Jess on Twitter @Jess_Commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.