Exit stage left: Miss America goes south

The Miss America Organization announced Thursday it will leave Atlantic City after 85 years on the boardwalk. It was a financial decision, pageant officials said, now that low ratings have forced the contest off the ABC television network and onto a country music cable channel.

The legendary beauty pageant is retooling its format in a frantic attempt to hang on to its remaining viewers. They're thinking of adding some reality show elements.

Here's some free advice for the Miss America pageant and its panicked producers.

Be who you are.

You're a beauty pageant. You're a nationwide competition to find a tall, lithe, leggy, stacked, smiling American goddess.

Don't be ashamed. Women have a right to be proud of being beautiful.

Drop all the chit-chat about education and charity work and stop raising awareness about vile and frightening things that no one wants to hear about, especially from you.

Don't be intimidated by activists or feminists or anyone who insists that women ought not to be paraded as sex objects. Remember that it's insulting to women everywhere to be very interested in their minds as long as they're under twenty-six and over five-foot-ten and built like an unprintable brick structure.

Be the showcase of unreachable beauty and be proud of it.

That should sell some lipstick.


Copyright 2005

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