Miss Universe shocker: the pics everyone's talking about

Tonight is the 60th anniversary of the Miss Universe pageant. A record 89 women will take to the stage in Sao Paulo, Brazil in national costumes and bikinis then answer questions such as, “Which animal would you like to be?” and “What advantage do women have over men?”

Sorry, girls, Miss Kosovo has already nailed that one with the blindingly insightful: “Because we can compete in pageants.”

Am I hearing right? This is 2011. Yet women of the modern world – sorry, Universe (come on Miss Pluto, Miss Venus – isn’t it time you showed up?) still think it’s empowering to parade in their smalls, and a staggering 6 million of us still think it’s fun to watch images like these:

Well, it isn’t. It’s stupid and anachronistic; the sort of visible and mainstream manifestation of sexism and objectification that ranks alongside Page 3 girls and Playboy bunnies.

I’m sure our Australian contender Scherri-Lee Biggs is a very nice girl. But this weekend her see-through gown and itsy-bitsy bikini pants made international headlines because organisers wanted to drum up some publicity. Oops, sorry, because her outfits were deemed too sexy. (Miss Colombia was also told off for not wearing knickers, to which she replied: “It was an accident. This is not the first time this has happened to me”.)

Now, I had a chat about this on the Today show yesterday. Funnily enough, straight after I talked about how female representation in the Australian work force is at a decade low with the proportion of women in 50 per cent of our industries lower than in 2006.

See any connection? I do.

You don’t have to be a hairy-legged feminist (though, fine if you are) to see that lining up a bunch of pretty girls from all over the world, sorry, universe (Why does Earth always win?) and judging them on who is the most pretty is hardly advancing notions of equality. As Caitlin Moran advises in How To Be a Woman: “The best way of detecting whether some sexist bullshit is afoot is to ask the question: Are the men doing it?”

Well, yes, there is a Mr Universe but that’s judged on muscles, and a Mr World, which is based on athleticism (there’s a mountain challenge and a cooking challenge). Last year’s Mr Hong Kong provoked a huge outcry about how the male contestants were treated as sex objects.

My problem with beauty pageants isn’t just that they turn back the clock on 40 years of liberation but that they also endorse conventional ideas of beauty. Is it any wonder that the US, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Sweden have won several times yet Korea and Vietnam haven’t had a look in. Red-heads, apparently, are also largely under-represented.

Like most girls growing up in the 70s and 80s, I watched these pageants with my Mum (in New Zealand there was jubilation of All Black victory proportion when Lorraine Downes won in 1983). But Mum was always careful to say: “They’re all beautiful but what’s more important is what they do with their lives”.

Yes, the comp has progressed. Banal witterings about world peace have been replaced with questions about the legalisation of marijuana and why Americans can’t find America on a map. The crown has been downgraded from diamonds to eco-friendly gemstones and synthetic rubies (representing HIV/AIDS awareness) and girls like Miss Greece have said they want to win “to see, to live, to learn”. (Although, this year’s Miss Thailand, upon being asked which animal she would like to be, answers: “I want to be plankton. Because then I don’t have to think about anything, just floating in the sea, and just let my body go into the biological circle, it would be so comfy.”)

And yes, Jen Hawkins may have turned victory into a fabulously successful career (and she’s a thoroughly nice person– as is Jesinta Campbell  who last year won Miss Congeniality). But these girls have reignited our pageant lust.

In 2000 the Miss Australia competition was abandoned as a relic of a bygone era and girls were, instead, chosen by modelling agencies to attend Miss Universe. But after Jen’s win the whole shebang was reinstated. In Britain, too, beauty comps have found their way back into universities – arguably because of a more general pornification of our culture.

Perhaps it’s only the girls themselves who can change things. After all it’s Yolande Betbeze, the 1951 winner of the Miss America pageant, who is actually responsible for Miss Universe after she refused to wear a bathing suit, declaring: “I’m an opera singer, not a pin-up”. The sponsors, Catalina Swimwear, were furious, dumped their sponsorship of Miss America and began Miss Universe the following year.

Sixty years on don’t you think we need another young feminist like Yolande?