There She Goes...

Wow. The swimsuit competition gone from Miss America? As an old person who watched the pageant as a child (yes, when Bert Parks was there) and who placed an informal bet with other members of the family on which state would win, it takes a minute to absorb this news.

One moment that stood out to me was in the 1961 pageant, when, as I recall, Miss Michigan’s high heel broke during the swimsuit portion. She simply kicked off the other shoe and walked the runway barefoot. “Who walks in high heels while wearing a bathing suit, anyway?”  she said during her personality interview -- and went on to win the Miss America crown.

Along came women’s lib, and it became much more difficult to defend the usefulness of beauty pageants. But I tried. I reasoned that many of these young women were interested in careers in modeling, the media, and public relations, or even politics, and their gift of beauty gave them a leg up, if you’ll pardon the expression, in pursuit of these goals, through the training, exposure, and scholarship money that was provided by the pageant experience and by the ensuing reign as the winner. The argument sounded more and more hollow with time, but it will always be the human experience that beauty opens doors, and it will continue to do so, unfair as it may seem.

Typical Americans, though -- we turn everything into an Olympic sport, even cupcake-baking. If Miss America remains a competition, will the participants have the opportunity to advance a cause that currently gets insufficient attention? That could be a good thing.

We are indeed in a revolutionary period, much like the French one. First it was sports figures in trouble, Then, Confederate flags and statues were toppled. Then #metoo. Many of our Hollywood and media, and even political icons have been pulled down from their pedestals, and we have to keep the baskets moving to catch all the rolling heads as cultural standards change.

But as we older people live longer, one of the side effects is seeing history dissolve in front of us. And we are all supposed to be clapping loudly. As new generations come along, it seems easy for younger people to quickly make it in leaps and bounds up to the moral high ground. Pardon us, but I hope we older folks get a little extra time to make the climb  -- and to adjust to breathing the air up there when we arrive.