By all means, Miss Utah’s views on social policy should determine her place in the Miss USA competition…
Every year some columnist or internet wag attempts to perpetuate the dumb bimbo stereotype and get cheap laughs in the process by calling attention to a beauty pageant contestant’s incoherent or fatuous answer to a question in the interview round. On rare occasions, the ridiculed response is jaw-dropping and genuinely funny, appropriately triggering fears that “Idiocracy” is upon us. However, the nonsensical curvy-contestent answer flagged by Daily Caller entertainment editor Taylor Bigler had a perfectly good excuse: the question was impossible to answer.
Bigler’s victim was Miss USA contestant Marissa Powell*, Miss Utah. The question came from—get this—“Real Housewives of Atlanta” star NeNe Leakes, the well-known social scientist. Leakes decided to slam Powell with the equivilent of “What…is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” (if you don’t get the reference, I feel sorry for you). Leakes asked this young women, standing before millions of TV viewers and a live throng under hot lights, in a bikini, what America should glean from the fact that 40 percent of women are now primary breadwinners, but earn less than men.
Quick, now: how would you answer that? My first thoughts: “How the hell do I know?”; “Search me!” and “Are you kidding?” Which jobs are we talking about? Earn how much less than men? Doing what? Which men? Both the men and the women are working, the woman is earning more, but she’s being paid less? Isn’t this two questions? No one who watched the endless candidate debates over the past two years can be unaware of the perils of answering questions that presumably trained, experienced and intelligent individuals have prepared for. Remember Mitt Romney’s classic, “I believe in an America where millions of Americans believe in an America that’s the America millions of Americans believe in. That’s the America I love”? And Mitt was running for President, and wasn’t in a bikini, for which we can all thank God. Here was Powell’s non-answer:
A fair observation from Bigler would have been that the question was unfair, just as it was unfair for Perez Hilton to ask another Miss USA hopeful, Carrie Prejean, her views on same-sex marriage in 2009. Before Bigler had standing to knock Miss Utah, she was obligated to explain what a good answer would be. I’m betting Bigler has no more idea than Powelldid, and she’s not on live TV, and like Mitt, also not in a bikini. Bigler snarks that even “World peace!” would be a better response than what Powell offered. Really, Taylor? And you wouldn’t have made fun of that answer?
This is bright line Golden Rule territory. How hard was it for Bigler to put herself in Miss Utah’s place and try to answer that complex, public policy, jobs/marriage/ social structure/ employment law/gender discrimination/ single parent household question (that the questioner herself couldn’t have answered convincingly) before she held the victim of this ambush up to ridicule? I would think that would be an obvious first step before one calls an answer stupid on a major website: make sure you have a better one. Then ask yourself if you could have come up with it in the stressful circumstances and unlikely setting that Miss Utah was in. Then consider how effectively you would have been able to answer that question when you were just 27, knowing that the answer you’d like to give and that the question deserved, “What? I have no idea. That’s an unfair and badly conceived question!” would probably hurt your chances of winning the pageant, since the quality being measured by the traditional Q and A segment is poise and demeanor, not public policy expertise.
Web entertainment editors seldom use the Golden Rule, however, because their job is to attract traffic and links, not be fair in the process. Might a teensie bit of feminine envy and feminist resentment have played a part in Bigler’s eagerness to take the beauty queen down a peg?
I could speculate, but that would be unfair.
I’m going to put on my bikini now.
* Laura Chukanov, Miss Utah 2009, was inexplicably misidentified by Bigler as the contestant in question, and the original post here followed that lead.
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Sources: Daily Caller, Sun
Graphic: Daily Caller
Ethics Alarms 
Biglar got Miss Utah’s name wrong. If I’m not mistaken, her name is Marissa Powell. A snarky comment about THAT would just be too easy.
You’re right! That Miss Utah won four years ago. This is she.
And I misspelled Bigler’s name. I am so pleased I chose to forego the snark on this one!
Tough question to answer. A good answer would be something like “It has the same meaning as a statement that people who identify themselves as devout Christians make 30% less than those who don’t.* It could be that there is systemic discrimination against Christians, it could be that Christians aren’t as well educated as non-Christians, it could be that Christians choose jobs that pay less, or it could be that Christians are concentrated in low-paying areas of the country. Without much more information, you can’t tell very much.”
*fictitious statistic
This would be an excellent question for a test on a student’s ability to evaluate data. I think I might use it.
Just saw “Spamalot”!
Do you mean women of African or European decent?
And over goes the bridgekeeper.
Since we all discuss weighty and complex issues here, I propose that we ALL should have to be in bikinis in order to properly answer, and our avatars should reflect that fact. Modern, get a chainmail bikini on that Black Knight. I’m pretty sure you can find one in the leftover 70’s fantasy novel cover prop bin. Meanwhile, I’ll design a line of stylish swimwear for geometric quilt patterns.
I can’t believe we’re still having beauty pageants.
I don’t think I’ve ever watched a beauty pageant in my life, but somehow I’ve gotten the impression that it’s kind of par for the course for the contestants to answer the questions a little obliquely. Take away the nervous pauses and clumsy phrasing in this video and that’s all that Miss Utah did. Basically, she says “We need to focus on creating more, higher paying jobs because equal pay is hard to achieve without equal access.” That’s a fine answer to an awful question.
I watched that video with trepidation because I’m prone to getting intensely embarrassed on behalf of the people in these situations – even in cases where they’re fictional characters. After I took my head out of my hands, I was able to say to myself, “That wasn’t so bad!” I don’t really get why this is going viral. I hope that at least a few other people are picking up on how confusing it is to juxtapose the phrase “primary breadwinners” with “making less money than.”
The answer is easy. If women are cheaper to hire than men, that makes men the last hired and the first fired.
The answer is even easier. Let the market work.
Is there any reason to think that this writer is a feminist?
Speaking of feminists, though, I agree with Amanda Marcotte’s take:
Sure: many, many feminists, I’d say most, dislike the USA pageant, think they undermine women and equal rights (I think so too), and like ridiculing the contestants.
I am very disturbed to have come out on the same page as Amanda Marcotte.
Isn’t that a little like saying “most feminists mock Republicans, so if someone mocks Republicans it’s safe to conclude they’re a feminist?” I mean, sure, many feminists like making fun of beauty pageants, but so does nearly everyone.
Unlike Amanda’s piece, nothing in what Bigler wrote seems to be a particularly feminist interpretation. But I was just asking, it’s not an important point to me, certainly not one I’d argue over.
I frequently come out on the same page as Amanda.
I once worked with a former Miss America when I was working in a concert hall and she was performing at a series of concerts. She was nice, hard-working, reliable, and she sung like an angel. But I didn’t grok what makes her exceptionally beautiful compared to other women. To my eyes, she was obviously pretty (and exceptionally carefully groomed), but no prettier than many other women I’ve met, or any of a thousand pretty actresses on TV.
1. Hardly. Objecting to perpetrations of gender sterotypes and the objectifying of women is a pillar of feminism, or at least a prominent branch of it. If mocking Republicans is now part of feminist ideology, the movement is in worse shape than I thought.
2. No, I don’t see her interpretation as feminist, just unfair. I think the urge to be unfair may be based in feminism.
3. Did you really use “grok”??? Wow. Memory lane!
Memory lane??
Grok is one of the most useful word when trying to discuss learning and understanding subjects.
It’s just one more reason why Heinlein rocks.