There She Goes, Miss America

You've come a long way baby. High, firm boobs. Taut, smooth skin. No matter how accomplished you become, these are the things that make up the ideal woman in the land of the free. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons just released its 2001 stats to show that youth-inducing nips, tucks, sucks and filler-ups have tripled in the past decade. Since the Federal Drug Administration's recent blessing of Botox to "treat frown lines," Botox parties are all the rage. You can now sip champagne and get poison injected into your face to achieve that smooth, paralyzed look. "Just like Snow White," as one repeat customer cooed.

Still, the most dramatic gains reported for cosmetic procedures lie in the quest for bigger tits, with a swelling of 533 percent. Seems despite the political, economic and social doors opened for women over the years, desirability is still the inescapable female measurement of success. In a 1968 press release titled, No More Miss America!, The Degrading Mindless-Boob-Girlie Symbol topped ten protest points. The Women Libbers wrote, "Miss America and Playboy's centerfold are sisters over the skin," calling the poised, primped and programmed contestants "The Living Bra."

To protest such an inflated ideal of womanhood, they tossed more comatose bras into a Freedom Trash Can outside of the annual pageant, along with other "symbols of oppression" like Cosmopolitan magazines, high heels and razors. Though nothing went up in smoke due to an unattainable fire permit, feminists made history as man-hating, hairy-legged bra burners with sensible shoes and no sense of humor. But you have to laugh at the irony in "No More Miss America" nearing reality more than three decades later. Shortly after recent reports of Miss America's financial and internal woes, the Federal Communications Commission cleared last fall's Victoria's Secret Fashion Show of violating TV's prime time indecency standards. Goodbye Miss America, hello Miss Victoria! With the flesh fest greenlit for next year, the "mindless-boob-girly symbol" is alive and shakin'.

Miss America's career may not have sagged and wrinkled, but the 81-year-old dame just can't stand firm next to the new meat on the block. Victoria's Secret has apparently found the winning concoction: non-stop, abundant flesh that is firm, glistening, spilling out of lace, leather and silk. So what if the annual "fashion show" is simply a shameless and saucy lingerie commercial? The hour aims to titillate and it does. Without pretense of moral purpose (Is that a nipple I see?) for parading fig-leafed nymphs, Victoria's Secret promoted their ABC broadcast as "the sexiest night on TV."

Miss America organizers, however, forever defend themselves as a scholarship program, and not, I repeat, not a beauty pageant. Call it what you will, but it has always been about physical allure for the sake of commercial arousal. Miss America was born in 1921 as a "bather's revue" to drum up post-summer business on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Launched with the arrival of an 80-year-old "King Neptune" and entourage of twenty cuties and twenty black male "slaves," the beauty contest climaxed with the crowning of a 16-year-old and wrapping her in the American flag. From day one, organizers had to package Miss America as preserving the cultural mores of the day.

As an official said of the first nubile beauty queen, "She represents the type of womanhood America needs -- strong, red-blooded, able to shoulder the responsibilities of homemaking and motherhood. It is in her type that the hope of the country rests."

To deflect criticism of moral corruption, then sexism, the pageant evolved with talent time, scholarships, current events and social causes, and downplayed the bathing suit competition as a display of athleticism and health. To stay culturally relevant and economically viable, organizers laced the historic call for T&A with the scent of virtue. But keeping allure, yet pure, with a commercial foundation isn't easy.