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What was that about “scholarship pageants”?

Jill

Despite their emphasis on being “scholarship competitions” and not beauty pageants, the Miss America foundation is giving pageant winners the run-around on collecting their prizes. Ashely Wood got into the Wharton School of Business at Penn, but hasn’t seen a penny of the $25,000 she won as Miss South Carolina 2004.

“You are talking about an organization that is promoting itself as the largest scholarship provider for women in the world,” Ms. Wood, 26, said of the Miss America Organization. “When contestants try to collect their funds, they encounter one obstacle after another.”

And it’s not just Wood:

Interviews with contestants across the country describe a Miss America system in which local pageant directors do not return telephone calls and e-mail messages for months, local competitions close down before scholarships are distributed, and the fine print in contracts creates hurdles. Local winners across the country have threatened legal action, and some have taken it.

You mean to tell me that the Miss America organizers actually care more about profiting off the bodies of beautiful young women than they do about giving those women money for education? Well knock me over with a feather.

6 thoughts on What was that about “scholarship pageants”?

  1. Wow, you’d think that this would be receiving, you know, a bit more publicity. I imagine that if Deal or No Deal contestants couldn’t receive their prizes, the media would throw a fit. But hey, this is women that we’re talking about. And pointing out issues with the Miss America Organization would interfere with the fun of our God-given right to ogle and judge women.

  2. Exactly, Cara. And it’s not just women — it’s women whose “place” is to be ogled and judged. Women who don’t have the brains to go to college anyway — I mean, it’s not like they’re getting into the best business schools in the country or anything, right?

  3. I can’t believe that this kind of exploitation isn’t getting any publicity . Well, I can, because I’ve learned to be cynical, but the fact that this only half surprises me is in itself a shocking indication of how little we as a society can value people.

    I really feel for these women. You can guess what I feel about the patriarchical nature of pageants, and the pressures on their contestants. I wish that society could value people on things other than appearance, and that more women understood the underlying misogyny behind much of what they are taught to like.

    That doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve every penny that is their due if they win. The pageants offered these prizes willingly even making a huge deal about them. Because of course a cattle market, I mean pageant which gives a scholarship can’t possibly be demeaning or sexist, so shut up you feminazis, you’re just jealous!

    I don’t know much about pageants, living in the UK, but I’d bet that the scholarship would have been a very considerable factor in most contestants participating, university eduation being so expensive in the States. Some people might have gone mainly to get publicity with which to launch themselves as a main motivator, but even if they were, that would enver excuse not giving them a prize they won.

    I hope that the young women manage to squeeze their dues out of the Miss America foundation. I also hope that soem good can come from this fiasco if more people realise how twisted thsi system really is. Somehow, I’m not really keeping my fingers crossed for that, though.

  4. Not to be too picky, but “front page of the New York Times” isn’t any publicity?

    With any luck that will be enough of a prod to help the people mentioned; whether it will help in general… I’m doubtful.

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  6. Considering the woman in the article won in 2004, so at least three years ago, I’d count it very slow publicity. Yes, it is publicity, and it’s good someone like The New York Times picked up on it, but that’s not to say this didn’t take far too long.

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