by The US beauty industry is “such a hot mess”, in a precise summation made last week.
Two reigning beauty queens have resigned in as many weeks, and there may be more turmoil to come in an area of show business that fosters the image of perfection – at least among the contestants – but that it is increasingly seen as out of date with modern social conditions. .
The drama started when 24-year-old Noelia Voigt, Miss USA 2023, recently gave back her crown, citing her mental health in a cryptic Instagram post that appeared to have the hidden message “I am silence.”
Voight later said that a driver who was taking her to the Florida Christmas parade made “inappropriate advances” toward her, and that she received little or no support when she raised the issue with the pageant president. Laylah Rose, he told her. , “Unfortunately, it’s part of your role as a public figure.”
In a resignation letter, Voigt said that Rose had threatened to deduct her salary over minor issues, and that Rose had said she expected Voigt to get punched in the face when she was booked to throw the open field at a game.
Miss Teen USA UmaSofia Srivastava later resigned, saying that her personal values no longer fully align with the direction of the organization.
Srivastava, a 16-year-old high school senior from New Jersey, had previously won the title in September, becoming the first Mexican-Indian American to do so.
The double resignation has thrown the Miss USA organization, which runs both pageants, into turmoil, with allegations of mismanagement and a hostile work environment filling the air like so much hairspray, rhinestones and positive thoughts.
Many of the accusations are aimed at Rose, the president of the Miss USA organization. At least on the surface – on Instagram – Voigt and Rose had a good relationship. “Thank you, @laylahrose, for doing all this,” one Voigt post read. “She’s going over and over! Good for our president!” read another.
But insiders said it wasn’t, and Voigt didn’t write the loud messages about Rose, according to the Daily Beast, and that it was written by the organization’s social media team.
And there was more to come. The Miss USA organization is in turmoil, characterized by leadership changes, falling revenues and dwindling television audiences, and ambitions to turn what was once a prized entertainment franchise into a showcase for female empowerment.
As reported by the Beast, problems started at Miss USA as soon as Rose took the reins last year. “It was a shitstorm from the moment he got up,” one pageant director told the outlet.
Rose, a former contestant who also walked in New York fashion shows, told NBC that “the well-being of everyone associated with Miss USA is my number one priority.”
“Throughout my life, my personal goal as the leader of this organization is to inspire women to always create new dreams, have the courage to explore it and continue to preserve integrity along the way, ” she said. “I hold these same high standards and take these allegations very seriously.”
According to Hilary Levey Friedman, author of Here She is, a history of the US beauty pageant, the controversy at Miss USA is “unprecedented”.
“No Miss USA since 1952 has retired before, and the only other national titleholder to retire before that was Vanessa Williams.”
Williams, who won a “swimsuit preliminary” and “preliminary” (for a vocal performance of Happy Days Are Here Again), was crowned Miss America in 1984, becoming the first African-American woman to receive the title. She was forced to resign months later due to the unauthorized publication of nude photos in Penthouse.
Friedman points out that controversies are on the rise. In 2022, days after R’Bonney Gabriel became Miss USA after winning Miss Universe, some contestants publicly accused the pageant organizers of rigging the vote.
An investigation was launched and the Miss Universe organization suspended Miss USA president Crystal Steward, who held the Texas, US and world titles herself in 2008.
Friedman, who argues in her book that beauty pages often reflect the arc of feminism, said the current controversy should be seen in that context. “The current wave of feminism is about women organizing and using their voices, especially talking about mental health, harassment, [and] workplace conditions in general, so it’s no surprise that we should see this in the aisles.”
But the upset isn’t limited to Miss USA/Universe. In 2018, the Miss America pageant ended the swimsuit competition to focus on being more inclusive of women of all sizes, and judging contestants on inner rather than outer beauty.
Winner Cara Mund later complained that she was “bullied, manipulated and silenced” by the panel’s leadership, including former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989, who was instrumental in forcing out the Fox News chairman. Roger Ailes resignation among many. sexual harassment claims.
Mund said Carlson, the chairman, and CEO Regina Hopper made her life “miserable.” Her speech, she said, was cut to 30 seconds, and she was told she could not wear a dress she was allowed to wear in the traditional “show us your shoes” parade. Both women, she said, “systematically silenced me, belittled me, marginalized me, and basically destroyed me in my role as Miss America in subtle and not-so-small ways on a daily basis “.
If women within the current series of scandals passage, it was not always so. Friedman dedicates part of his book – Tabloids, Trump, Tits – to the era when Donald Trump held the Miss USA franchise from 1996 to 2015.
The former president is said to have met his second wife Marla Maples when she was Miss Hawaiian Tropic, and he liked to hang out backstage with contestants because, he said, “he owns it” . Trump Tower was home to at least three “a” beauty queens. According to Friedman, Trump is “a central figure that connects a range of fighters, politics and feminism”.
Among the most notable things that the former US president did was when, in 1996, he tried to put Miss Venezuela, Miss Universe Alicia Machado on a diet, and complained that she was an “eating machine”.
“One of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty pageant – he loves beauty pageants, he supports them, he hangs around them – and he called this woman ‘Miss Piggy’, and then he She was called ‘Miss Piggy’ because she was Latina,” Machado later recalled.
According to Friedman, the controversies are a reflection of a broader change in America that includes women’s rights. She said: “Young women are visible after the women’s march in the US, [and] the MeToo and Time’s Up movements, that they can organize, use their voices, and not have to endure what they see as harassment and abuse in the workplace.”
But Friedman also argues that the picture is somewhat nuanced. In the 1940s, Miss America added a scholarship at a time when women for the most part did not seek or fund higher education. “This is a tool for some people for social mobility,” she says, “and it’s empowering for some people.”
“If women want to say this is empowering for me, and it’s a great way to use my voice, speak out and be part of my community, and it works for them, we shouldn’t end an opportunity because it is not so. our choice,” Friedman said.
Objectively, Friedman said, people aren’t paying as much attention to stage beauty pages as they once were, but that doesn’t mean we’re not looking—we’re just doing it in other ways.
“The Bachelor is very popular, and every episode has a big beauty pageant element. Instagram, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is still to come, Victoria’s Secret fashion is back, the Met Gala,” she said. “Especially with the rise of reality TV and social media influencers – they’ve just changed.”
