Everything that’s wrong with America

40 thoughts on Everything that’s wrong with America

1. Oh, that poor kid. All she wanted was to put on a gown, get a lot of attention and maybe win a scholarship or something, and now she’s going to be stuck as a YouTube clown for the rest of her life.

2. I know. I feel really sorry for her — that sucks. For the record, I didn’t mean that she is everything that’s wrong with America. I meant that our obsession with things like beauty contests at the expense of anything meaningful (like educating our population) is what’s wrong. That probably didn’t come across clearly, though.

3. I’ve now seen this clip on 3 different feminist blogs. I didn’t see it anywhere else because I don’t go to site’s that are about making fun of women. I don’t go to sites to check out funny dumb blonde jokes. And that’s what she is. She’s the funny dumb blonde joke. Ha. Ha. Look at how STUPID her answer is! Look at what a BIMBO she is! Ha. Ha. Because girls like her bring all the “real” women down. Girls like her are a dime a dozen, right?

   Now, if this proves to you that beauty contests don’t value a woman’s intelligence, then I can’t help but wonder which planet you were living on until this week. They aren’t called intelligence pagents, they’re called beauty pagents for a reason. Some girls are forced into the pagent life from very early childhood. They are valued for absolutely nothing other than their charm and beauty. They aren’t given much of a chance to be much else than this. They are sexually exploited, abused, and treated like garbage. For feminists to sneer at them? Join the sexists in a hearty laugh at their expense? Well, Jesus, it’s just not right. It’s not okay.

   If you’re not about equality for all women, then you’re totally full of shit. I don’t really know what feminism means in post-modern times anymore, but if it means that the “right” kind of women (read: upper middle-class professionals) should prosper at the expense of the “wrong” ones (read: sex workers, admins, waitresses, and well, anyone who isn’t an upper middle-class professional), count me out.

   And just one more note, in response to the comment that you have nothing against this woman and you’re only further humilating her to make a point about educuating the population. You have no idea if this young women is intelligent or not. She had a bad moment on television, she lost her bearings and became incoherent. That doesn’t make her stupid, it makes her human. I sincerely hope you never have an embarrasing moment captured on camera so you won’t know what it’s like to become a national joke!

4. On one level, yes, she is an attractive blonde beauty pageant fulfilling the dumb blonde stereotype and that makes us laugh because it encapsulates our ideas about what blondes are supposed to be like and/or what beauty pageants stand for.

   On the other, it’s just funny to watch someone give a fumbling, incoherent response in an oratory tone in answer to a question on a serious subject. Whether or not the person is blonde, a woman, or a beauty pageant.

5. I feel sorry for her on one hand, because the argument could be made that she’s part of the parade that the patriarchy puts on to convince us that being pretty equals success and oops, she got nervous and everyone’s going to make some kind of example of her. She played by the rules and still got screwed… No puns intended.
   That said, the only time I’ve heard this mentioned by an acquaintance offline, all that was said was, “Did you see Miss South Carolina? Wow. She’s hot.” Oh, how I long for a day when being coherent will be more important to the population at large than your measurements and highlights.

6. Why do some make fun of this young woman while so many tolerate equally awkward remarks by our President, remarks about matters of grave importance? An eighteen year-old recent high school graduate, hoping to use her beauty to win a little scholarship money to attend a local community college, stumbles and millions of people make fun of her. An adult, one-time hard-drinking, cocaine-snorting, college frat boy type, makes stupid ass comments, can’t pull himself away from a pet goat book when our nation is under attack, leads us into an unprovoked war based on lies, and we re-elect him as President of the United States of America. How do I explain that double standard to my 18 year-old daughter? I cannot.

7. I have to agree with Rose. I find it incredibly disheartening every time I see this video posted on a feminist blog, but it’s even worse that Feministe has chosen to use say she is “everything that’s wrong with America.” Yea, that’s original: use the body of a woman who has had very little control over her own life, as a symbol of the negative aspects of a nation. She has all of the responsibility and none of the power. How typical.

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9. Seeing this did make me stop to think about how I need to get less judgy about women who work the system, and willingly make themselves into commodities. Because what else is someone like that going to do to get by? If you don’t have the stuff to do the kind of work where your skills and labour are reasonably valued by the market, then getting praised/paid/married for your beauty is a better deal than stacking shelves for a living.

   It’s a little like Bernard Shaw’s argument about prostitution in Mrs Warren’s Profession.

10. Just because I’m a feminist I’m *never* allowed to laugh at a woman, any woman, simply because we have similar genitals?

11. I’m with Rose, et al. So she isn’t so good with extemporaneous speaking. Neither am i, but it doesn’t make either of us dumbasses. It just means that we aren’t good extemporaneous speakers.*

    Actually, it doesn’t even necessarily mean that. Maybe she’s normally a great extemporaneous speaker, but she just made a mistake on that particular question. We don’t know, because there’s no context.

    I write all this in full knowledge that that’s not what Jill intended here, but the post itself is incredibly poorly worded.

    *For a while there, i couldn’t think of the word “extemporaneous”, so i went to Wikipedia to help. While there, i found a Seinfeld quote that i think is appropriate: “The average person at a funeral would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.”

12. I meant that our obsession with things like beauty contests at the expense of anything meaningful (like educating our population) is what’s wrong.

    Agreed. If it helps, I didn’t think for a second you were bashing her. It’s not your style, or your principles.

    If you don’t have the stuff to do the kind of work where your skills and labour are reasonably valued by the market, then getting praised/paid/married for your beauty is a better deal than stacking shelves for a living.

    Orlando, good point.

    Still cringe watching it. Ai-yi-yi.

13. Anyway, the clip is hilarious and the kid is going to be a thousand times more famous now than if she had won the competition. She seems to have a good sense of humor and has publically laughed at the situation herself.

    And come on, “..the Iraq, everywhere, like, such as,” is probably one of the funniest things I’ve heard ina while.

14. Miss South Carolina is both a victim and a perpetrator. It’s nothing to do with her hair color, or whether or not she is a “real” woman. For you to say that feminists are sneering at her is an incorrect assumption; feminists are sneering both at the content of her response and at the system that devalued her intelligence so thoroughly that she never really learned how to answer a question.

    Many have laughed at her for her “answer” to a question, which is unfair. This is unfair because she has spent her life looking pretty and being told that her only value is her beauty; when she is asked to answer a question, then, her lack of preparation in using her brain shows.

    However. She took a question about the ignorance of Americans and tried to turn it to America’s duty to “help” the people in South Africa and “the Iraq.” Fairly racist, yes? To downplay your own country’s ignorance and turn the focus to brown people? And what we, ignorant as we apparently are, can do to help these poor ignorant foreigners?

    Of course, you may argue that that’s all she was taught, or rather, not taught. In which case, we come around neatly to Jill’s title; this clip represents all that is wrong with America: telling women all that matters is how pretty they are, ignorance and imperialism at the same time, and a failure to educate properly. Ironic considering ignorance of Americans was Miss South Carolina’s question. Wonderful how that all comes together.

15. I posted this on my blog despite the feeling I had of “this is not right because I abhor Fark-like blogs which make fun of everything under the sun”.

    I feel bad for her in some tiny part of my mind; on the other hand what she represents is a great part of what is wrong with this country. Miss Teen USA touts itself as a scholarship pageant; if this is a scholarship event then some scholarship might be expected. Otherwise let’s expose it for what it is. This little viral video might help make clear the need for young women to speak and think clearly. Wouldn’t it be grand if learning to think on your feet and speak well became as important to these young women as choosing a dress and the right accessories? By putting her out there in all her verbal ineptitude, while flaunting and criticizing her valley girl persona, we may be able to make at least one fifteen year old realize that this pageant thing is not such a good idea. If that be the case then I am all for it.

    The girl in the vid is seventeen, not a fragile china doll. She will not crumble from or be psychologically damaged for the rest of her life. That which does not kill her will make her stronger.

    To quote: Some AM talk show host “…She went down the wrong road and couldn’t figure out how to get back to the right one….”

    Well now maybe she can.

16. Rose and Shira, thank you so much for your wonderful analysis. I completely agree.

17. My 12:42 pm comment seems not to have made it through “moderation”, so here it is again, with the one likely offending phrase replaced:

    Why do some make fun of this young woman while so many tolerate equally awkward remarks by our President, remarks about matters of grave importance? An eighteen year-old recent high school graduate, hoping to use her beauty to win a little scholarship money to attend a local community college, stumbles and millions of people make fun of her. An adult, one-time hard-drinking, Vietman-dodging, college frat boy type, makes stupid ass comments, can’t pull himself away from a pet goat book when our nation is under attack, leads us into an unprovoked war based on lies, and we re-elect him as President of the United States of America. How do I explain that double standard to my 18 year-old daughter? I cannot.

18. Oh, and to help illustrate the point:
    I saw this video posted at the top of the MySpace login page under their ‘cool new videos’ section today:

    http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=16914127

    I can’t actually view the video because of software issues, but for those of you in the same situation I just want to point out that the image associated with this clip is a man dressed as a beauty pageant contestant wearing a sash that reads ‘Dumb Bitch’.

    Also note that this Feministe post is filed uner ‘Stupidity’. I’ll leave it at that…

19. Oh, and to help illustrate the point:
    I saw this video posted at the top of the MySpace login page under their ‘cool new videos’ section today:

    http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=16914127

    I can’t actually view the video because of software issues, but for those of you in the same situation I just want to point out that the image associated with this clip is a man dressed as a beauty pageant contestant wearing a sash that reads ‘Dumb Bitch’.

    Also note that this Feministe post is filed under ‘Stupidity’. I’ll leave it at that…

20. It’s certainly cringeworthy in its incoherence, and personally I refrained from blogging it because it breaks my heart. (Poor thing, she tries so hard to appease the patriarchy, and all she gets for being semi-beautiful and intellectually non-threatening is the “dumb slut” label — so maybe that is everything that’s wrong with the world, that you can’t win. Catch-22. Good luck carving a niche between dumb subhuman slut and intellectual unfeminine abomination.) But in all honesty, the question that I was ultimately left with was, uh, it’s a beauty contest. Best cow of the show. Why are they supposed to speak, anyway? What does that have to do with it? Because obviously, it’s not about whether they have a beautiful voice?

21. I have to agree with Rose. I find it incredibly disheartening every time I see this video posted on a feminist blog, but it’s even worse that Feministe has chosen to use say she is “everything that’s wrong with America.” Yea, that’s original: use the body of a woman who has had very little control over her own life, as a symbol of the negative aspects of a nation. She has all of the responsibility and none of the power. How typical.

    She isn’t everything that’s wrong with America; the video footage is. Here’s a 17-year-old young woman who is growing up in a society where she’s more valued for her looks than for her intelligence, and that puts her in a “scholarship pageant” where she’s paraded around like a show pony. Now, I agree with Orlando that she’s making a pretty sound decision given her options, and I’ve written about that point before. You’ll have a hard time finding anywhere where I’ve said that women who participate in beauty pageants are idiots. I also realize that a moment of inarticulateness does not make her an idiot. But this clip, to me, does encompass a lot of our social problems, because she doesn’t seem simply inarticulate — she seems completely thrown, and like she has no idea how to answer that question. That’s troubling. We have some seriously misplaced values in this country, and this clip, to me, illustrates that.

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23. ArthurKC, I think your comparison to Pres. Bush is powerful. Not because of what it says about feminists (’cause we DO make fun of him), but what it says about this country and all that’s wrong with it.
    This young girl isn’t everything that’s wrong with America. The fact that her beauty-pageant flub has been so widely circulated and mocked is. I’m pretty sure that’s what Jill is trying to convey.
    Women are stuck in a catch-22. Society places more importance on girls’ looks than their brains, yet when they live up to the expectations (by being pretty & stupid) they’re torn apart by it. It’s completely unfair and it reflects poorly on those who are laughing at her without examining her situation or questioning how we raise girls.
    But to be honest, what she said IS funny. Just because she’s a female doesn’t mean I can’t laugh at the sheer absurdity of what came out of her mouth.
    Also, the fact that this teenage pageant includes a swimsuit portion is part of “what’s wrong with this country.”

24. Mostly I want to chime in with Rose, et al. I’ve been seeing this everywhere, I’ve been seeing people on feminist blogs use the words “dumb,” “moron,” etc. to describe her, and claiming that her performance says anything at all about the quality of her education. (Nevermind things I’ve seen from other sources, like blaming her for perpetuating the “dumb blonde” stereotype, rather than blaming the people who are using it against her.) The fact that even a handful of usually reasonable feminists are responding this way disgusts me utterly. I expect it from others… but from these people? Ugh.

    And seriously, people, this is not about responding on your feet, or even about answering the question. That’s a hard question to answer well for a beauty pageant. I have a hard time, given time to think, coming up with an answer that’s sufficiently yay america patriotic enough to do well in such an environment. And is anyone really kidding themselves enough to think that it’s “smart,” in a situation where you are potentially about to win money for a scholarship at a beauty pageant, to answer that question honestly?

    (First time commenting here, but I read regularly… don’t eat me!)

25. Just for the record, I agree with Rose, Hectaeluna, etc. Sorry if I was defensive earlier. I thought my meaning would be clear enough, and I was pretty surprised at the vitriol of the responses. Then I went and read the responses at other feminist blogs (I haven’t read a single other blog in three weeks) and I see where it comes from.

    Hopefully that clarifies things. I’m exhausted and incoherent, but perhaps I’ll write more about this tomorrow.

26. I thought you meant Slater hosting a beauty pageant when Screech is clearly more qualified.

27. Another angle to the whole thing is that her incoherent gibberish answer is probably going to work a lot more in her favour than if she had given a thoughtful, truthful answer like: Our schools are underfunded, there’s a shortage of teachers, we place a very small value on intelligence, no child left behind is a joke, etc. ad nauseum

28. i’ve seen this going around, poor girl. makes me laugh everytime though (so bad.)

    if you’re interested, i’d love it if you would considering blogging about charity/pity model of disability and how detrimental the labor day telethon is this weekend. if you would be willing, please check out crip-power.com or karasheridan.com 🙂 (sorry to post in a comment instead of email.)

29. How about looking at the premise of the question itself, which is patently false? Maybe that’s what threw her. The National Geographic 2006 study found that nearly 94% of young Americans CAN find the US on a map.

    I’m torn between laughter and sympathy for her situation, but I’m astounded at the lengths to which some commenters have gone to create a backstory for this young woman in order to make a political or philosophical point. “[S]he has spent her life looking pretty and being told that her only value is her beauty”? Do we actually know that about her?

    Pageant contestants are trained and expected to answer questions that seemingly reflect their awareness of current issues, and she flubbed it. That’s all.

30. While her youth may be a factor, I do agree with Jill and others that her comments are indicative of the paternalistic mentality prevalent in much of the American cultural discourse regarding “Third World” nations. Growing up and going to school in the states from public school to university, I’ve constantly heard the refrain that the US must do more to “teach” other nations without any thought as to whether other nations have different and equally valid ways of doing things and more importantly, whether Americans other nations with a Colonialist legacy have a right to impose their supposedly “superior” cultural values on other societies.

    Related to this, her statement about how the US needs to help countries like South Africa and Iraq strike me as particularly absurd as most students/co-workers I knew from both nations tend to be far more knowledgeable and aware about the world around them than most middle/upper class Americans in similar age groups/education levels I’ve met at university and in the workplace.

31. I was thinking the same thing too Ann.

    I know this couldn’t have been her first pageant, however, I think the question itself was monumentally horrible. I know a question that bad (like the job interview “what’s your weakness?”) would send me into a brain freeze at sheer shocking quality of the question.

32. Hi I usually am just content blurking but felt had to say something to people who think feminist blogs and this site in particular is doing a disservice to this ‘poor little dear’ and feminist causes in general by posting this video.

    I think what is MORE stupid than her answer is (which by the way i think is more incoherent than stupid) is the question itself.
    why ask THAT question in a beauty contest. is a woman who is primarily going to be judged on her vital stats throughout this pageant. why is she expected to know what is wrong with US’s education system/policies? The hypocricy of this question answer round boggles the mind.
    you are going to judge her on her boob size, her glowing skin- that is what this digusting contest is for, then please also have the guts to ask her politically incorrect questions like whether she prefers shaving or waxing or shaving, what she thinks of brazilian wax, what she thinks of various kinds of heels, different kinds of swim wear. that IS her area of expertise her area of interest CLEARLY! it’s like asking questions about educational policies and proposed reforms in a medical conference!
    as we make fun of the women who are answering stupidly, we also need to look at the DUMB QUESTIONS!
    And anyone who has read more than 5 posts in feministe would really know what Jill was focusing on. It wasn’t that difficult to see that she was not making fun of this girl.

33. I’m torn between laughter and sympathy for her situation, but I’m astounded at the lengths to which some commenters have gone to create a backstory for this young woman in order to make a political or philosophical point. “[S]he has spent her life looking pretty and being told that her only value is her beauty”? Do we actually know that about her?

    Absolutely. We know what happened in 45 seconds of her life. Who knows how she was raised? What her parents or parent figures taught her to value? Perhaps they valued sports or school or drama club, or maybe she’s been working since 14 to py for her dresses. Maybe society has valued her beauty- I am sure it has- but we have no idea how smart or not she is.

    I mean, its funny, though I wouldn’t call her “dumb” but I am also not going to try to explain her flub as a sign of the times or of the failure of those around her to raise her.

34. Lloyd Webber:
    Word to your mother.
    “Because we have contests like these that show how we value the superficial over actual education.”
    What I wouldn’t give for her to’ve given that answer, and then have everybody feel a video of that was worth spreading all over the web.
    Sweet, sweet dreams.

35. However. She took a question about the ignorance of Americans and tried to turn it to America’s duty to “help” the people in South Africa and “the Iraq.” Fairly racist, yes? To downplay your own country’s ignorance and turn the focus to brown people? And what we, ignorant as we apparently are, can do to help these poor ignorant foreigners?

    But that’s the problem. The pageant organizers took a segment that is typically geared towards providing a platform for banal observations about the value of charity, and our responsibility to help the less fortunate, and they turned it around and gave this poor girl a brutal “gotcha” question: it’s an American pageant, she’s from one of the reddest of red states, and they basically give her “Americans are stupid. Why do you think this is?”

    Some people may very well be able to think on their feet fast enough to turn that around and come up with a positive, pro-America message that fulfills the expectations of the judges, but it hardly proves that this girl is uniquely stupid because she was unable to. I’ve seen people flop harder than this in university seminars giving presentations from prepared texts.

    There’s no point to be made about patriarchy, or pageant culture here. She didn’t screw up because she always believed her only valuable asset was her beauty. She got nervous. It happens. The whole response to this is just a bunch of mean-spirited picking on a girl who got flustered and babbled a little on national television.

36. Oh, come on Jill. You meant that you couldn’t believe how stupid this girl is. Once you realized how mean of you that was you backtracked. It’s ok to be mean every now and then . . . It’s actually quite fun sometimes.

37. Just in case you think the young lady in question didn’t have a sense of humour about the whole thing:

    http://www.people.com/people/quiz/0,,20053640,00.html

38. LittleMac is right: She choked, and her answer was gibberish. She probably had 50 independent thoughts zinging around in her head and her mouth sampled some of them. I suspect that Iraq came from a practice question and that she could have just as easily started talking about world hunger.

    I’ve choked too, although not on national TV. It’s not a lot of fun. Usually while I’m speaking, my brain will tell me, “Man, what are you saying?!”

    Now that I’ve lectured for a 1000 hours or so. I’m pretty comfortable speaking in front of groups. Still, a few months ago when I played a trio with my nine-year-old daughters at a piano recital, I was so nervous I was shaking. If we hadn’t been first, I might have passed out.

39. Et tu, Jill?

    Did anyone see her interview on a morning talk show the next day? She didn’t fully understand the question — (it was out of left field) and her big mistake was in not asking the questioner to repeat it; instead, she just went for it, to unfortunate results.

    Also, reality check; SHE”S 18 years old. How many of you would have had the poise to say anything coherent on national TV at that age? (Yes, I know she had been groomed for this moment; but obviously not enough.)

    Jill, despite your updated explanation, I am horrified that feminists feel just fine laughing at this young woman and you say this shows everything wrong with our country (??WTF??).

    Recreationally humiliating pretty blonde women has become a national pasttime more than ever this past year as the Lindsey/Paris/Britney follies have shown. It is a deeply alarming trend that feminists should be examining, not pilling onto.

    Something is seriously wrong and up with that; I’d like to see some feminist analysis of that phenomenon. Seriously.

    Where are all the male celebrities during hate and mock fest of L/P/B? To get this kind of public derision, men have to yell Nazi propganda at cops while driving drunk (Mel Gibson), murder dogs with their bare hands (Vick) or attempt to blow cops in restrooms (Craig and that Florida guy–don’t even recall his name)-and even those stories disappear after a nine-day wonder. Meanwhile, left AND rightwing pile on L/P/B relentlessly, nightly over absolute nonsense.

    L/P/B or some conbination are featured on Keith Olbermann EVERY NIGHT (I am not exaggerating) with some hideous male commentator making disparaging remarks with KO. It’s absolutely disgusting (and no I’d don’t watch–I get the Iraq news updates, the latest Reb scandals and turn off that sh*t before the hatefest starts.)

    (Meanwhile, Phil Specter is currently being tried for MURDER and the media barely peeps about it. I am gobsmacked by all this.)

40. Destructor: I like the People.com geography quiz. :o)

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