Miss America Analysis

Cue the Walking Meat Parade

Get out your makeup and tease your hair! Use your hairspray to make that suit stick and put on that fancy ball gown! Now that it is time for Miss America here come the many points of view on beauty pageants. There are some news sources who like to show more bias than others. The author of the New York Times article remained less bias on the Miss America topic than the interviewer in the CNN article.

The CNN article used was between two interviewers, Margot Magowan and Tucker Carlson, and a past Miss America pageant participant, Erika Schwarz Wright. In the interview, Margot Magowan seemed very aggressive in her questioning when she referred to the women in Miss America as “have to be paraded around in meat-market fashion” and even asks Erika Schwarz Wright, “Does anybody turn on Miss America for the pianists?” Erika strongly rebuts Margot by arguing, “You’re wrong” and “You’ve not been there”. Margot states she felt it was unfortunate that the only way Erika got that scholarship money was by fitting “certain measurements” after Erika told the interviewers how Miss America allowed her to not have any student loans after law

Protesters of the pageant complain that the winners are “unintelligent, inarticulate, and apolitical”. The author defends the women in the Miss America pageant by saying most of the girls that win come from Ivy League schools and have high-level college degrees. Despite defending these women, the author still critiques Miss America because of the way it exploits women. She wrote the swimsuit competition is labeled the “lifestyle and fitness” category and that their “rhetoric rings hollow”. The label tries to calm the angry feminists but falls short. The author tries to show both sides of the argument while still sharing her opinion on the