Don’t Miss the Final Episode of Miss America: Reality Check!

Tonight at 10 p.m. on TLC the final episode of “MARC” is airing and three women will be named winners.

I am admittedly a pathetic excuse of a pageant blogger because I have not written about the first three episodes. Of course I’ve watched them, but I don’t like writing about things that I have such mixed feelings on.

Luckily though, CNN published something that shares many of my opinions:

Miss America pageant mocks contestants

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- She's been dressed up, dressed down, relocated and updated.

Now she's being mocked.

The latest chapter in Miss America's ever-evolving search for viewers and cultural relevance finds the heroine at the butt of the joke.

Her hair is too big, her hairspray totally '80s. Her makeup is clownish. Her gown belongs on an ice skater.

This year's 52 Miss America contestants haven't just been getting judged, they've been getting zinged in "Miss America: Reality Check," a four-part reality series leading up to Saturday's 8 p.m. EST crowning on TLC.

The series, whose final installment airs Friday, has tracked the transformation of beauty queens from old-fashioned "Pageant Pattys," as some in the pageant world say, to modern "It girls."

..."It's someone who doesn't go out and get drunk, but goes out and makes people laugh and has fun on the red carpet," said Sarah Iven, editor in-chief of OK! Magazine and a pageant judge, describing her choice for the tiara. "Not a young woman stuck in an old woman's suit."

...Setting the contestants up for potential humiliation and cracking jokes at their expense, however tame by reality TV standards, has ruffled the feathers of some longtime pageant devotees.

...Born of a bathing suit revue on Atlantic City's Boardwalk, the pageant is fueled by a vast web of earnest and devoted volunteers who put on and judge pageants in small towns across the U.S. State "prep committees," often made up of middle-aged women, pick out and pay for their contestant's ensemble, perhaps an explanation for the stuffy suits. They've schooled their contestant in a tradition and a look -- and it doesn't have much to do with red carpet style.

I don't think it's going over so well," Jill Massee said. [Miss Georgia's aunt] "I personally think it's a little bit degrading to the Miss America Pageant."

Haskell dismissed such complaints. The old school crowd may be the soul of the pageant, but it can't become the only television audience if Miss America is to have a future.

"If I brought Bert Parks back from the dead to host it, some people would be unhappy about that, he said.


I only copied two-thirds of the paragraphs; CLICK HERE for the whole thing.