Modernized pageant not so different

By Kaitlin Barr
February 7, 2008

One thing I never realized about having a baby was the fact that you really don’t have a life. If I’m not at school, I’m home with my daughter. As much as I love every minute of it, when I found myself watching the Miss America pageant on a Saturday night, I knew at that point; I really have no life.

That’s beside the point, however.

What I don’t understand is why the Miss America pageant was portraying the fact that it’s the new and “modern” pageant, when the entire time, they acted the same as always.

When I was little, a girl I went to grade school with always had her birthday parties on the weekend of the Miss America pageant. We would have a sleepover and have contests on who the winner would be.

We all looked forward to her birthday parties because we always had such a fun time and pretended to be the contestants. Whatever, I was young, oh well.

When the pageant began, they had a DJ on the side of the stage ready to “hit it” as the hosts would say.

Speaking of the hosts, I’m not sure who they were, but if I had any advice for the Miss America Organization, it would be to get new hosts, because the ones they had this year tried to act way too cool.

From what I remember from all those years of birthday parties, the talents of the contestants were always either singing, dancing or twirling batons.

For making this year all about being “the modern day woman,” all their talents were exactly the same. A few dancers, few singers and one amazing violinist were all the talents this year.

The terrible thing about the talent competition though, was not the talents themselves, but it was that they had all the top 12 girls advance, thinking they were all going to show off their talent, then right before someone would perform, they would eliminate one. How awful is that?

Those poor girls dressed in talent outfits then bam, they’re out of the contest.

Another thing I thought was weird and unnecessary was having all of the girls who did not advance to the finals sit on the stage. I’m sorry, but if my dream was to become Miss America, and all of a sudden it was taken out from under me, I wouldn’t want to sit on stage for hours and watch someone else be crowned Miss America.

One thing I always wondered, but not enough to actually research it is, what’s the difference between Miss America and Miss USA? Is it the fact that they include the Virgin Islands in Miss America and not Miss USA?

It’s weird and random that they have two different titles in the U.S.

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Kaitlin Barr

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