and now, for a REAL pageant winner

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veena_crowned.jpg

anyone catch the miss america pageant this weekend?

Miss Alabama Deidre Downs, an aspiring doctor who put off medical school to compete for the Miss America crown, won it Saturday night.

but…

…Miss North Carolina Kristin Elrod was second runner-up, followed by Miss Arkansas Lacy Fleming and Miss California Veena Goel.

this wasn’t Goel ‘s first attempt at the crown; the UCLA grad/Pi Beta Phi Alumna was a runner-up in the 2001 and 2003 miss california pageants as well. if at first you don’t succeed…

this year, Goel got some press as part of the national pageant:

In a preliminary competition earlier this week, Miss California, Veena Goel, won the talent section for a jazz dance routine and told reporters she had been dancing since age 3.

she also commented on this year’s swimwear “controversy”:

Goel, 22, defended the swimsuits, saying they were intended to show that contestants were physically fit, not just thin, echoing the official line of the organizers.

not just thin? interestingly enough, Goel’s “platform” was eating disorders; the issue is a personal one, since she suffered from anorexia in the past.

via HT and Salon.

11 thoughts on “and now, for a REAL pageant winner”

  1. First Mohini and now Veena, both Bruins. Damn. I need to stop writing for Sepia and leave my frickin’ building at UCLA sometimes.

  2. Goel, 22, defended the swimsuits, saying they were intended to show that contestants were physically fit, not just thin, echoing the official line of the organizers.

    seriously, the fact that she has to defend this is ridiculous. the people who think swimsuits are out of place at a beauty pageant would probably get along jusssssssst fine with the burka squad.

    btw abhi, methinks both of them stay far away from the engineering building…as do most women… 🙂

  4. btw abhi, methinks both of them stay far away from the engineering building…as do most women… 🙂

    good thing you typed “most”. i have a massive engineering fetish. 🙂

    . . .

    this pageant is a consummate anachronism; the swimsuits weren’t thought of as “out of place”, they were just more revealing…and considering that many aspects of “miss america” haven’t changed since, oh, 1938, it was a huge deal.

    more from the washington post:

    The bathing suits, brought to you by new corporate sponsor Speedo, have also been trimmed. Now, they are so skimpy that they would have flunked the rules as they were written a few years ago.
    …As ever, resistance came, too, from Miss America’s elders — an armada of former winners, gay men and elderly volunteers who work on the pageant and who guard this franchise like an only child.

    i probably should’ve elaborated on the “swimsuit controversy”. my apologies. i’ll try not to be so “CBS” next time. 😉

  6. from Miss America’s elders — an armada of former winners, gay men and elderly volunteers who work on the pageant and who guard this franchise like an only child.

    It’s funny that the WaPo explicitly mentioned the non-heterosexual role here. Guess the editor who vets for PC content was on vacation! 🙂

    There’s a related point that bears repeating: the ideal of the rib-skinny, tall, flat-chested, androgynous woman is not the ideal woman for heterosexual males.

    It is the ideal woman for a gay fashion designer, though, as lots of clothes look good on tall skinny women. Thus it’s kinda funny when feminists complain about how “men” are putting up these impossibly skinny standards of beauty, when the ironic truth is that heterosexual men overwhelmingly prefer women with prominent secondary sexual characteristics! 🙂

    (Put another way: you will never see websites for “skinny girls” or “ribs showing, only $9.99 per month”. And few are more attuned to the male libido than porn purveyors…)

  7. the ideal of the rib-skinny, tall, flat-chested, androgynous woman is not the ideal woman for heterosexual males.

    There’s a classic study (couldn’t find it after a min of googling but it’s out there somewhere)… Folks took the avg measurements of women in a series of Vogue / Cosmo mags (aimed @ women) and compared ’em with measurements of gals in Playboy, et. al.

    As expected, the Playboy women were FAR closer to the mean (albeit NOT exactly the mean) than Vogue / Cosmo. They were shorter, heavier, more proportionate arms / legs, etc….

  8. good thing you typed “most”. i have a massive engineering fetish. 🙂

    Hmmmm. Now THAT is strange. 🙂 But as you’ve probably noted, I generally insert qualifiers as a matter of habit so as to armor myself against PC objections 🙂

    [e.g. “probably”, “generally” in this sentence alone!]

    they were just more revealing…and considering that many aspects of “miss america” haven’t changed since, oh, 1938

    Huh. My impression was that we were seeing another battle in the post-Clinton rollback of extremist 70’s feminism, as today’s generation of women realizes that looking good & having a career doesn’t mean hating men, obsessing about “objectification”, etc.

    That is, I was under the impression that swimsuits had been pushed out of Miss America in 1999 by the delayed malign influence of Steinem, Abzug, Friedan, and the rest of the crew. Their insane protests during the 60’s and 70’s had finally borne fruit – in 1999, before Clinton totally discredited feminism, they banned any sort of skimpy bikini. So isn’t this just a restoration rather than a newfangled innovation?

    Also, for those who think I exaggerate the hostility that feminists had towards beauty pageants…Check it:

    In 1968 feminists targeted the Miss America Pageant for protest. They staged a theatrical demonstration outside of the Atlantic City Convention Center on the day of the pageant. The protest was one of the first media events to bring national attention to the emerging Women’s Liberation Movement. Over the next decade, the women’s movement would rival the civil rights movement in the success it would achieve in a short period of time. One of the protest’s leading organizers was 27-year-old writer and editor Robin Morgan. In the group’s manifesto written to explain the protest of the Miss America Pageant, “No More Miss America!,” Morgan took direct aim at what she called “the degrading mindless-boob-girlie symbol” so prevalent in the media. Morgan attacked the “ludicrous ‘beauty’ standards we ourselves are conditioned to take seriously.” She also attacked the pageant’s beauty standards as racist. As of 1968, no African American woman had taken a place among the contest’s finalists. Morgan went on to condemn “the unbeatable madonna-whore combination” and the mixed messages women were socialized to accept. “To win approval, we must be both sexy and wholesome, delicate but able to cope, demure yet titillatingly bitchy or should we say [ill-tempered] … Miss America and Playboy’s centerfolds are sisters under the skin.” In addition, in sending pageant contestants and winners to entertain troops in Vietnam, the women served as “death mascots” in an immoral war. Morgan asked, “Where else could one find such a perfect combination of American values — racism, militarism, capitalism — all packaged in one ‘ideal’ symbol, a woman.”

    These are the people who are now professors of women’s studies, pouring their poison into the ears of kids at every university. Brrrr….

  9. Hmm, why is it that the posts with pictures of pretty women get the most comments on sepiamutiny? I’m sure gc will point to some socio-biological study explaining why….

    Sexy swimsuits at a beauty contest? File under the category of ‘duuuuh, what did you expect?’

  10. She was mentioned in Jay Leno’s monlogue. “Congratulations to Miss California who won the talent competition. Her talent staying a virgin in California for 22 years.”

  11. She was mentioned in Jay Leno’s monologue. “Congratulations to Miss California who won the talent competition. Her talent staying a virgin in California for 22 years.”