A few days ago, Carrie Prejean was dethroned as Miss California. I don’t personally take much of an interest in beauty pagents, but this is an odd one. Ms. Prejean became “newsworthy”, of course, as the contestant who supported “opposite marriage” and not gay marriage, but the reason behind her de-crowning seems even odder to me. Apparently she wouldn’t follow pagent guidelines, including lying about semi-nude photos.

This confuses me to no end. As far as I can tell, the point of the Miss USA pagent is for young women to walk around in bikinis having their bodies judged. They make themselves in to sex objects in the hopes of attaining a prize. But if, heaven forbid, they chose to pose with an inch more skin showing than the skimpy bathing suits do, that’s reason to be dumped from the competition.

I don’t get it. The Miss USA contest objectifies women’s bodies but if they do it themselves they’re out of the running? I’m not a fan of the contest or of Ms. Prejean’s views on marriage, but this seems to be something of a double-standard.