The Miss America contest is the only thing on TV tonight other than reruns of “Murder She Wrote.” It’s appalling but almost mesmerizing to watch intelligent grown women act like Barbie Dolls.
Feminists had these spectacles figured out a long time ago. They’re the human form of livestock shows. There are lots of objectionable things about them like objectifying women, the requisite big blonde hair & all the prosthetics involved, promoting competitiveness between us, making groveling for attention, flaunting & exhibitionism feminine virtues. But to my mind, the worst–bar none–is the infantilizing of women.
Their model of female perfection was the ideal of the 1950s that we were expected to live up to so it’s no wonder our generation of the 1960s was the one that protested these damn things because we well knew that behind the glamor was the obedient wife in house dresses & the squalor of women’s degradation. There’s been some progress though. They don’t manufacture house dresses anymore.