UVSC panel asks: Do pageants hurt or help?

OREM — As a newly crowned Miss Utah Valley State College took her place in the lineup of queens who have represented the student body over the years, experts debated the role of beauty pageants on college campuses.

Sponsored by the college Center for Ethics, four panelists talked about the venue: Is it something that enhances the college scene and boosts the morale and pocketbooks of those involved? Or does it trivialize women and undermind what an institution of learning is trying to do?

Three said pageants serve a legitimate purpose.

Laura Hamblin, assistant professor of English at the college, said she sides with the feminists who protest the Miss America Scholarship Pageants. She said she believes pageants serve the male patriarchy and promote an ideal of conformity and superficiality that ultimately hurts women.

"If one wins, does everyone else lose?" Hamblin asked. "Do the rest feel drab, fat, ugly and loathsome, and where are the rest of the women, the married, the divorced, the single mothers?"

Hamblin said beauty pageant organizers consistently point at the opportunities afforded the contestants and the winners, but the opportunities are not offered or available to all, particularly when those involved are judged against a plastic, doll-like ideal.

The pageants create anxiety, and women try to fit into an impossible image, feeding industries that benefit from their attempts as women seek diets, makeup and hair products and surgeries that will help them "win."

Miss UVSC 2004, Carly Tooke, said she decided to become involved because she wanted a forum where she could help prevent teen suicide.

"I lost a cousin to suicide and I saw a need," Tooke said. "I got into this not because I wanted to parade around on stage in a swimsuit but because I saw a way to get my message out there."

Tooke said she's paid for her four-year degree with the scholarship money she won competing in the Miss Utah Scholarship Pageant for three successive years, first as Miss Spanish Fork, then as Miss Utah Valley and finally as Miss UVSC.

Tooke said her experience has paid off not only in dollars but in greater self-confidence and an increased awareness of her place in society.

Phil Clegg is currently the vice president of Student Activities and responsible for the pageant. He's also a pageant judge with 12 years experience.