Swing State Miss America Contestants—We Can Respect People While Also Objecting To What They Do If We Choose

Here I am the last month at a Cincinnati Reds game with swing state beauty pageant winners.

These ladies recognized me in Cincinnati as the Texas Liberal blogger and approached me for a picture.

The above sentence is a lie.

On the left is Ms. Ohio and on the right is Ms. Pennsylvania.

Miss Ohio is Elissa McCraken of Ada, Ohio. 

Miss Pennsylvania is one Jordyn Colao of Erie.

I know some folks dismiss these folks as shallow or symptomatic of a sexist culture—and of course it is a sexist culture in very many ways—but I wager life is as difficult for the contestants in these pageants as it is for most of us.

I bet many of them come from blue-collar or middle class homes and that winning the contest takes plenty of personal discipline and hard work.

Here is website of the Miss America pageant.

I believe that the division of the nation is so complete that separate Miss America pageants are now held for solid Obama states, solid Romney states and for swing states.

This is why Miss Ohio and Miss Pennsylvania were hanging out together.  Miss North Dakota and Miss Utah must be on some other circuit.

If you are old enough, you can recall that Bert Parks hosted Miss America for many years.

Here is an article about a protest against the Miss World competition in London in 2011.

From that article—

” The Miss World contest doesn’t have a pleasing past as far as its experience with feminist organizations goes. The protest in 1970 against the Miss World Contest in London was a spurring moment in the women’s liberation movement….Girls, will you turn around? host Bob Hope asked the contestants during the live event at London’s Royal Albert Hall so that judges could get a 360-degree view of the participants in bikinis. Hope didn’t have a clue that he was going to be pelted with flour bombs and tomatoes by feminists present in the show. Police later arrested five protesters. Police later arrested five protesters.” 

That is excellent. I wish I had been at that event and seen the protest.

While we need to be respectful of how people live and what people do, we also reserve the right to hold strong opinions and to take actions that we are prepared to accept the consequences of when we disagree with what is taking place.