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Beauty and Success Are Bourgeois Values and Must Be Crushed
Exhibit 1. The Miss America pageant is eliminating beauty as a standard for deciding who will win its contests. In other words, the entire competition comes down to who gives the best “I will work for world peace and uphold the values of the Miss America pageant” speech.
The competition would focus more on the contestants’ talents, intelligence and ideas. “We are not going to judge you on your outward appearance,” [Chairwoman Gretchen] Carlson, who was Miss America in 1989, said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Tuesday. “We are moving it forward and evolving it in this cultural revolution.”
Interesting choice of words, “Cultural Revolution.” The last “Cultural Revolution,” the Maoist one, was also purging individuals who didn’t fit it with a leftist’s ideal society. And the death toll was in the millions. But as the left says, “If you make an omelet, you need to break some eggs.” (The eggs are human lives, the omelet is socialist utopia, in case that wasn’t obvious.)
Exhibit 2. The German Government, or at least, it’s left-wing, is considering using taxpayer funding to create pornography for feminists. The key part of their plan is that porn should feature ugly people and lectures about gender role. I am not making this up.
A group of German legislators who are aligned with the majority government, are pushing a law that would require the German people to fund the creation of anti-sexist pornography that features “fat, skinny, young and old people.”
Germany’s state run television networks ARD and ZDF would then broadcast the adult films to fight sexism on the ground.
Germany’s younger legislators believe that “mainstream porn generally shows sexist and racial stereotypes in which consent is not a theme and certain ‘optimal’ body types are made as standard.” Mainstream porn also fails to show responsible use of contraception, they argue, and fails to model adequate communications strategies between the two (or, really, several) partners.
So, just like sports in America have become a conduit to deliver social justice lectures, German pornography must now also service the cause of social indoctrination. And the indoctrinated message must be “
Beyond those two examples, the idea that no one should be special is pervading the entertainment media. Star Wars: The Last Jedi made this clear with its whole “Anybody can be a Jedi” theme.
There are shades of Harrison Bergeron … the classic Vonnegut short story in which the “Handicapper General” hobbles the able-bodied, masks the beautiful, and blares loud radios at the intelligent to keep them from thinking…. so that no one can be stronger, better-looking, or more intelligent than anyone else. That is how they achieve the ideal Utopian “fairness” that the cultural left claim as their Holy Grail. In the real world, they don’t need to use weights or masks, just constant attacks on achievement and celebrations of mediocrity.
The social left is obsessed idea that nobody should feel bad about themselves for being less attractive or less capable than anyone else. Funny thing, that idea is pretty central to the Judeo-Christian ethic that the social left professes to despise. And Judeo-Christianity was doing a pretty good job of teaching it without taxpayer funding or Government imposing mediocrity by Bureaucratic Fiat.
Published in Culture
They can say they are eliminating beauty as a standard, but if they do, no one will watch the pageant. So it will either go off the air, or they will end up looking like hypocrites when all the contestants just happen to be beautiful and they’ll be accused of lookism or some similar bias. It seems like either alternative would be worse than the criticisms that come with the status quo, where they can at least admit their standards and not look hypocritical.
The wonderfully named Diana Moon Glampers.
a) The Miss America Organization is a private, 501(c)4 non-profit organization. The Miss America Pageant is a “reality tv” show. i.e. It’s a freaking game show. They can set whatever criteria they want for their little game show. I don’t get why so many people are getting so worked up about the rules a private organization sets for its little game show.
b) There is plenty of competition for the Miss America Pageant. In addition to all the other beauty pagaents out there, if you want to look at pretty girls in swimsuits there are ample opportunities for you to do so online. The Miss America Pageant is truly an anachronism, not because “the culture” has changed but because technology has made it obsolete. That’s precisely why their ratings have been falling like a rock for an entire generation now, and why they need to do something desperate to stay afloat. Blaming “cultural change” is a total red herring.
c) Speaking of a so-called “cultural revolution”, didja notice how the acronym for the Miss America Organization is MAO? Utterly irrelevant to the debate, but it’s still a funny coincidence.
d) If it turns out that the Miss America Organization receives taxpayer subsidies (over and above their tax status as a non-profit organization), then I’ll start to get upset about it.
FIFY
LOL. Without her looks she would be working at McDonalds. Based on brains Gretchen would never have won the pageant or worked for Fox.
Clearly these Stazi idiots have never heard of rule 34
The Left hates any attributes that you have to be born with, anything that can’t be bought or bestowed by the government, and they hate anything that has cachet. They try to destroy the NFL because not everyone can be a football star. Not everybody can be Miss America either, so tear it down. If everybody gets to do it, it isn’t special anymore.
The feminists hate models too. They try to call them “freaks of nature” as if that will make people go “EW! EW! Look at Heidi Klum, that poor freak of nature.” Good luck with that. They’ll keep trying though, because these people actually believe human nature is malleable and can be socially-engineered away.
Because we can’t have special, now can we. No, the Left’s idea of equality is a dull dreary sameness. Nobody stands out, nobody is better than anyone else.
How come children and adult males get jackets with pockets, but women do not? How can that be paradise?
The German government should learn the rules of the Internet. They’re clearly neglecting Rule 34 here.
There’s already plenty of porn out there that features ugly people subverting gender roles. There is zero need for government to subsidize such things.
Maybe this sort of stuff isn’t being produced in Germany, and that’s why the German government thinks it needs to subsidize it?
It’s porn! The language spoken by the performers is utterly irrelevant!
Don’t try to tell me those chicks aren’t wearing make-up.
Kozak, I followed Rule 34, and then I followed the link that said there was bird porn there. But I found no bird porn. Bummer.
Kent
Well, maybe there is a deeper genius going on here. Surely the Miss America pageant changes will wipe away forever the bursts of such free enterprise nonsense as people wanting to rush into plastic surgery to get special noses to match celebrities like Meghan Markle. There will be no more of this, for the good of all. And the German film changes will just reinforce that refinement of society (appearance blindness). Because we all know promoting appearance blindness has worked so well that Caitlyn Jenner on a magazine cover didn’t get any liberal admiration. Oh, wait.
Big Story
Maybe that’s how they tell men and women apart?
This is further confirmation of my suspicion that, for a good many on the left, policy changes–whether in the public or private sector–are designed to eradicate perceived inequalities/offenses that occurred in their youth. Were you ordinary or somewhat unattractive at a young age? Make appearance irrelevant. Were you subjected to wisecracks at a young age? Extend “bullying” from the physical to the verbal. Were you not very good at sports? Reward participation and eventually muddy the waters on gender participation. Have problems interpreting literature? Eliminate the Western Canon as a source of wisdom.
As long as people have eyeballs, none of this stuff is gunna work. Just saying.
Yeah, cuz the Miss America Pageant is such a huge driver of culture and fashion trends in 2018.
Those of us of, umm, “a certain age” recall when it was a big deal. I think that I remember watching it with a bunch of adults (a Miss America viewing party?) on a black and white TV, and I definitely remember the fuss over Mary Anne Mobley. Then television expanded into just everything, then Bert Parks went away, then feminism led us to question the whole concept. It’s completely irrelevant today, although I suppose this development is somewhat significant as a blip on the cultural radar screen.
I’ve always taught my daughter that the Left is made up of the dorks who didn’t sit at the popular lunch table in high school.
I remember too! September was such a special month. First day of school, the new car models were unveiled, and Miss America. (That was back when you could actually tell a Ford from a Chevy from a mile away. Unlike now when Cadillacs look like Hondas)
Ms. RightAngles, I’ve always thought that the Right evolved from the ugly high school dorks. If your daughter is pretty, she’s going to end up a social justice warrior. Heaven forbid! Am I wrong here?
Kent
And why would anyone need to tell them apart in leftist paradise?
Or maybe because they are SJW converged but realize that there would be new contestants such as a woman with a penis; seeing that in a swimsuit might really hurt advertising revenue.
Hat tip wirecutter. Linked site not CoC compliant; he didn’t phrase it quite the way I did.
Yes, that is incorrect in my opinion. People who were socially accepted in high school go on to face life with the confidence that goes along with that. While nobody gets through adolescence without a few scars, it’s the outcasts who never truly get over the deep scars. I don’t say that all dorks go on to become resentful liberals, but I do say that a huge majority of liberals, especially feminists, have a need to tear down those who make them feel inferior.
They never learned that tearing others down doesn’t make you bigger. One of the first things the feminists ever did when the movement was born was to picket the Miss America pageant in the late 1960s:
Nobody can convince me that Andrea Dworkin’s deep hatred of men wasn’t born from their rejection of her:
Ms. RightAngles, I think you made your case. In spades. (Whoops, forget I said that word. I’ll apologize for it tomorrow.)
Kent
I remember one weekend when our son was home from college and we stumbled on a classic car display at a local drive-in restaurant. I was going around saying “that’s a 55 Chevy, that’s a 63 Vette, that’s a T-bird, etc.” His response was “how do you know all that?”
I’ve seen a picture. She’s lovely.
Thank you! She is! And she’s a Republican.
Shush, you! I like my eyeballs right where they are! Not plucked out and served up on some violent SJW’s dinner plate.
That’s one of the two funny lines I heard about the Miss America pageant, they had to get rid of swimsuits so we wouldn’t see the bulges. The other line was that Miss America should just turn the pageant into a [penis] measuring contest.