Miss USA 2004 Shandi Finnessey and Miss USA 2003 Susie Castillo recently released their review on Miss USA 2017 pageant.  While Susie liked the pageant, Shandi was highly critical.  She believes the pageant is moving in the wrong direction.  This really made us think – Is the new “winner should be an achiever” ideology of IMG-managed Miss USA pageant a good idea? Let’s have a look at both sides of the coin.

Feminists have been crying since long that pageants objectify women and are irrelevant to today’s times.  Families cannot watch the show together.  However, the feminists may be happy with the Miss USA pageant now.  Families can watch the show together and it is in direction of women empowerment.  This gives a good image to the pageant in eyes of many.  Also, achievers are definitely good role-models for the very young people.

On the other hand, Shandi put forward some good points.  This is a BEAUTY PAGEANT.  Please let pageants be pageants!  Variety is the spice of life and every role is important.  Military is important.  Scientists are important.  And pageant queens are also important!  With the change in the working of the pageant, deserving girls are losing their opportunities.  As such, there have been pageant queens who were not from military, who were not nuclear scientists, who are not very highly educated and yet they did a great jobs.  Why, the most celebrated beauty queens like Priyanka Chopra, Aishwarya Rai, Lara Dutta, Sushmita Sen, Dayana Mendoza, Pia Wurtzbach, etc. – they were not having the high academic or work profile prior to winning and yet they did great jobs!  It would be nice if Miss USA sticks to it’s personality, rather than becoming Miss America.

Points from both perspectives are pretty valid, though if we were decision makers, we would stick to the way things have been – the pageant was good in the Trump era; little bit more stress on interview skills and it can be great!  Please let us know your thoughts on the matter in comments! 🙂