For one thing, beauty pageants are all about pageantry. They’re not really platforms for sound political or philosophical discourse. Yet, the way the participants in this year’s Miss Universe pageant are being turned into avatars of the broader “debate”, you’d think beauty pageants are such deep wells of intellectual insight.
The current focus of today’s shrill “activist” rhetoric is Miss Spain, Angela Ponce. She is the first transgender (formerly male) Miss Universe contestant. She is there because, well, the Miss Universe rules now allow it. Trouble is, the debate rages anyway.
But, really, this is just the Miss Universe, folks. It’s a private enterprise designed to attract eyeballs and get the ratings. Controversy brings in those and the ad cash that comes with it. So perhaps a bit of perspective is in order. Winning a “debate” on how the Miss Universe pageant ought to be run won’t change the world. The only people laughing all the way to the bank will be the Miss Universe owners and their organisers.
Perhaps the ends of SJW liberals could be achieved by changing the definition of “woman” in the policy guidelines of a for-profit franchise such as the Miss Universe pageant. But, utltimately, the decisions that go into how this event is run are mainly driven by business objectives. And that is the inconvenient truth at work here.
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