There’s a stark difference in the body shape of the Miss America winners of the past, to the ones today. [Photo: PyschGuides.com]
The Miss America contest has been around for a long time now – 94 years to be exact. And in those 94 years, dozens of ladies have been crowned the winner, a title that’s awarded to the women who best represent the American ideal of beauty.
Since crowing Margaret Gorman as “The Most Beautiful Bathing Girl In America” in 1921 (a title which evolved a year later to “Miss America”) the competition has prided itself on showcasing young women who are bursting with “beauty, grace and intelligence”. Yet each of the girls crowned are slim and svelte, suggesting that you need to be thin to be beautiful.
It seems like a missed opportunity. The Miss America contest is a big deal – even here in the UK it’s widely talked about – and while many of the attributes of the winners are worth aspiring to, it doesn’t seem to be offering up a positive body image for its audience. All of the women who’ve won the crown are without lumps, bumps and curves, unlike the majority of the US female population.
The lack of diversity is made apparent in a GIF created by Psych Guides – a mental health resource website that’s newest project is on the evolution of Miss America.
This GIF shows how Miss America winners have slimmed down over the years.[Photo: PyschGuides.com]
The GIF shows how Miss America winners have slimmed down over the decades, decreasing their body mass index (BMI) while the general US population’s BMI is on the rise.
“In the early generations, the BMI scores for Miss America winners hovered within the middle of the healthy weight range but soon began their descent toward the low, unhealthy range,” Psych Guide’s report says. “Using historical data on both the pageant winners and the average American woman, we were able to estimate that the only decades during which Miss America fell into the same range as the average U.S. woman were the 1940s and 1950s.
“In the decades since, the pageant winners have become markedly thinner, while the average woman’s BMI has been increasing. Now more than ever, the ideal image of beauty portrayed by the contest inaccurately represents average American women.”
This year’s Miss America winner is noticeably slim - and Caucasian. [Photo; Rex]
The report continues to say that a third of Miss America winners are considered to be underweight, making their figures almost unobtainable for the average woman.
And it’s the young fans who keep up with the pageant who are most susceptible to experiencing higher levels of body dissatisfaction – so surely it’s the contest’s responsibility to include women boasting healthy and more normal body shapes?
What do you think? Should Miss America and other similar beauty pageants be more “real”? Tweet us at @YahooStyleUK.
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