Miss America



"Miss America represents the highest ideals. She is a real combination of beauty, grace, and intelligence, artistic and refined. She is a type which the American Girl might well emulate."

This picture of Margaret Gorman, the First Miss America in 1921, shows just how remarkably our culture’s views of beauty, gender and sexuality have changed. The Miss America Pageant has been about the American dream – a dream of being beautiful and being successful. It was a dream that most women realized they could never achieve but still struggled with. But now, we all feel entitled to be “Miss America.” We live in culture that socializes girls to think that if we had enough will power or enough money, they could look like any celebrity they chose. No matter what body you were born into, if you had the right plastic surgeon, the right personal trainer, the right diet, the right clothing, the right nutritionist you too could look like any celebrity you chose. MTV’s I Want a Famous Face follows the transformations of young people who have chosen to use plastic surgery to look like their celebrity idols. “Whether it's a Pamela Anderson wanna-be or a Janet Jackson hopeful, their goals are not just to look differently, but to look exactly like their favorite stars,” states their website. This is the American dream becoming a nightmarish reality.

...just a little food for thought.

Posted by Michelle
Thursday, June 14, 2007 9:02am