No one wants to believe me when I say the contestants I met were nice, especially other women. "They were just ACTING nice! That's their JOB!" Ohhhh-kay... well, they sure are good at their job, then! Seriously though, most of them were sincerely likable, and not at all the plastic, Barbie-doll phonies that one would expect them to be (in fact, a few of them would even be considered by most people to be downright homely).

They are cut from a different cloth than most girls-next-door though, what with their desperate desire to be thought of as all-around terrific in everyway imaginable. I sure don't relate to that mentality — it looks EXHAUSTING — but to each their own. Who am I to judge? I'm just some smart-alecky asshole, and most likely so are you.

Like most smart-alecks, when I thought of The Miss America Pageant at all I thought of it as something vaguely EVIL, or at least incredibly stupid. But it isn't evil OR stupid, and I really have to wonder now how I or anyone else ever got so carried away in thinking otherwise. It's just one more form of entertainment; a glitzy three hour long game show, and getting bent out of shape over the winner supposedly representing "all of American Womanhood" just means you're falling for the pageant's own hype. People who try to politicize beauty pageants or spitefully point out flaws in Miss Utah's thighs really ought to invest their energies elsewhere. Go teach some "at risk youth" how to read! That's what Miss America would do!

The Pageant is ultimately just about the Pageant, just as the WWF is really only about wrestling, and the Indy 500 is both for and about people who like to see fast cars go varoooom. Miss America is an "evil" institution only if you insist on making it out to be one. Otherwise it doesn't mean anything to anybody other than people who love to look at pretty ladies with make-up and fancy dresses on.