Could You Define Miss America For Me?

I was not able to watch the Miss America pageant last night because we don't have television service in our home. I logged on to twitter before I went to bed and read the tweet by tweet commentary by my pageant watching friends. After the kids and Eric left for school, Dinah had breakfast and began watching a movie. I grabbed my phone to see which contestant won.

What I read made me sick to my stomach.

No, I'm not upset that the winner, Nina Davuluri, is of Indian descent.

I'm grieved because some of the comments I read essentially said this:

The Miss America pageant winner should be representative of the all-American girl and because Miss New York is of Indian descent, it basically disqualified her from this.

Just go to twitter and search #missamerica. You'll see what I mean.

REALLY, PEOPLE? REALLY?

Per the Miss America website, Miss America is required to be

• Be between the ages of 17 and 24.
• Be a United States citizen.
• Meet residency requirements for competing in a certain town or state.
• Meet character criteria as set forth by the Miss America Organization.
• Be in reasonably good health to meet the job requirements.
• Be able to meet the time commitment and job responsibilities as set forth by the local program in which you compete.

I don't notice anything in that statement that specifies a skin color or country of ancestral origin.

"Miss America represents the highest ideals. She is a real combination of beauty, grace, and intelligence, artistic and refined. She is a type which the American Girl might well emulate."

Those words were spoken by Atlantic City Chamber of Commerce President Frederick Hickman more than 75 years ago, and they still ring true today. Miss America is a role model to young and old alike, and a spokesperson, using her title to educate millions of Americans on an issue of importance to herself and society at large.

I could take the Miss America pageant or leave it. I haven't watched a broadcast of it in about 10 years. I didn't aspire to be her and I don't necessarily want my girls to be Miss America even though God made them VERY beautiful on the outside. (That's another blog post in itself.) There are many women who can have the qualities of "beauty, grace, and intelligence" or be "artistic and refined" and still be ugly on the inside, so forgive me if I'm not overwhelmed by pretty packaging and performance.

BUT,

I can't sit back and be silent when people bash a woman for not being the right ethnicity in the country that is made up of immigrants. We all came from somewhere else a few generations back except the Native Americans.


I'm going to leave you with a few quotes but first I congratulate Nina Davuluri, Miss America, 2014.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours."  ~Vine Deloria, Jr.

Only Americans can hurt America.  ~Dwight D. Eisenhower

Not merely a nation but a nation of nations.  ~Lyndon B. Johnson

It is the flag just as much of the man who was naturalized yesterday as of the men whose people have been here many generations.  ~Henry Cabot Lodge

Quotes courtesy of www.quotegarden.com and www.missamerica.org

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