Anyone who knows me knows that I am obsessed with beauty pageants. Yes, like “Toddlers and Tiaras.” When I moved from New York to Georgia as a kid, I was fascinated and horrified by the spray tans and fake teeth that appeared in children’s beauty pageants. Naturally, I immediately signed up for my first pageant and made competing in them my only personality trait. Each week at The Oracle, we do a Sport or Not column. I figured since I was writing this week, I should tackle my favorite activity.
Sports are known for blood, sweat, tears and competitive determination. These are all qualities pageants are full of. I have seen meltdowns and fist fights in dressing rooms before a pageant, which adds a physical element. There is also a judging system. These are all elements of sports.
However, pageants lack uniformity. For some pageants, you might have talent portions or interviews. For others, they may be judged on appearance alone. One pageant may require completely different things from the teenage category than they do from the miss category.
Pageants are also, unfortunately, subjective. Some sports are subjective and score based, like figure skating or dance, but have universal skills that have various levels of difficulty associated with them. With pageants, you may win one and then lose another with seemingly no rhyme or reason. Some competitions are rigged and others are random. When you ask a pageant girl why she won, her answer is likely to be “I have no idea!”
Because of the lack of universal score sheets or rules, and because of the overall subjectivity of competition, I have to say, as a pageant girl, beauty pageants do not qualify as a sport!
