Miss Santa Cruz Protest and Beauty Pageants

Your editorial on the recent events at the Miss California contest missed the point of the unusual protest by Miss Santa Cruz.

You made the tiresome mistake of comparing beauty contests with athletic contests. It doesn’t take much to realize that one is based superficially on looks, the other on athletic skill and achievement. It’s true that the beauty contests claim to be “talent” or “scholarship” events, but if that were the case, then we’d see among the winners an occasional ugly woman who just happened to be talented or smart. Has there ever been such a Miss California? Those labels don’t fool anyone. Beauty contests are still just one more impossible standard to hold over young women who are fooled into thinking that their destiny depends on packaging, not content.

In your final paragraph, you trivialize the complaints of Miss Santa Cruz by saying they may have been appropriate 15 or 20 years ago when “ . . . women had fewer professional opportunities.” Just how are the two related? Because more women are now entering law schools, (yet still not becoming partners in law firms), does that justify parading women’s bodies about and selecting the thinnest, blondest and “most perfect” to represent California? It’s still demeaning to women and there is no comparable event in the male world.

George Deukmejian represents California, too, but not in his swim suit.

SHIRLEE H. GRAFF

Camarillo