Miss USA Pageant officials have recently confirmed that they paid for Carrie Prejean’s breast augmentation. Prejean was the Miss California contestant in the most recent Miss USA Pageant.
Prejean ultimately finished runner-up in the competition. She caused considerable controversy at the pageant when she openly stated her opposition to gay marriage during the question-and-answer portion of the competition. Many pageant insiders believe that her statements regarding gay marriage most likely cost her the Miss USA crown.
However, should she have even been runner-up under the circumstances? If this is a beauty pageant, shouldn’t the contestants be judged on their natural beauty and not a surgically enhanced body? Is it fair to the other contestants who are comfortable with their bodies and who compete without the aid of plastic surgery to award this woman second place?
It seems to me that this is somewhat analogous to the steroids controversy that has plagued Major League Baseball during the past decade. Many people have argued that baseball players who have taken these performance enhancing drugs are nothing more than cheaters. This has caused several players, most notably Mark McGuire, to be denied access into the Hall of Fame despite having the career statistics to justify induction.
If Barry Bonds is to be vilified for taking steroids, resulting in many people claiming that his career home run record is tainted, then shouldn’t we hold all competitors to similar standards? While breast implants are not illegal substances, they certainly constitute performance enhancement when it comes to a beauty pageant. If Barry Bonds gets an asterisk next to his home run record, then so should any beauty queen who wins after undergoing plastic surgery. Otherwise, you are penalizing all contestants who do not take similar measures.
If you need breast augmentation, liposuction, or a tummy tuck to have a strong showing in a swimsuit competition, then you most likely do not deserve to win the pageant. By awarding someone like Carrie Prejean second place, pageant officials are sending the wrong message to future contestants. They are essentially saying, “If you want to win, go see your local plastic surgeon.”
There is another question here which must be discussed. Is it ethical for the pageant to pay for her breast augmentation? Miss USA Pageant co-director Keith Lewis spoke about the pageant’s decision to fund her surgery. He claimed pageant officials felt that they wanted to help her have the confidence she needed to best portray herself at the competition. After talking with her following her victory at the Miss California competition, it became obvious to them that this operation would help her achieve the confidence she needed to compete at her best.
Personally, I think that self-confidence is a serious component of a person’s beauty. If a woman lacks that confidence within herself, it will most likely show through at the competition and hurt her chances of winning. But if she lacks that self-confidence, is she truly the most beautiful or deserving of the crown? Is it the place of the pageant to give her a shot of self-confidence when they did not help other contestants in a similar way?
In my opinion, this incident further taints a competition that to me is already suspect in nature. I am not a fan of beauty pageants, and I don’t watch them. I don’t think that they portray women in the way they deserve to be portrayed, and I think that in many ways, they perpetuate the beauty myths that fuel many of the self image issues that a lot of American women suffer from. The fact that pageant officials have made the unspoken statement that this is what is valued in a beauty pageant is abhorrent.
This is not meant to be a tirade on breast augmentation. There are many reasons why women choose to undergo the surgery, and for many of them, it does help their self-confidence. Getting breast implants is a highly personal decision which should not be made lightly. But it has no place in a beauty pageant, and the pageant officials should not authorize payment of a contestant’s surgery. That only makes a mockery of the entire competition, and to be honest, these pageants can’t afford to look any more superficial than they already are.
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