Overcoming Buffaloes and age-old sexual exploitation

Joshua Rich Trivial Pursuits

We Wolverines certainly had a lot to cheer about this weekend. As I'm sure you've by now read, the University of Michigan's triumphs in the national spotlight this weekend didn't end with our miraculous destruction of the Buffaloes from Colorado.

For those of us lucky enough to have kept our tellies tuned in to the Alphabet network Saturday night, we witnessed the annual Skin-and-Grin festival commonly known as the 77th Miss America Pageant. Looking closely, we noticed one of our very own among the toothy masses - Engineering senior Kimberly Stec.

To be sure, Stec had the honor of competing as Miss Michigan, following in a long line of illustrious state champs, four of whom have been celebrated as our "ideal" over the years: Patricia Donnelly in 1939, Nancy Fleming in 1961, Pamela Anne Eldred in 1970 and the immortal 1988 Miss America Kaye Lani Rae Rafko. I understand that it has been a longtime dream of Stec's to compete in the Miss America Pageant, so I sincerely commend her.

From what I could see, Stec did a tremendous job: When it was her turn to smile, she smiled, when it was her turn to prance across the stage, she pranced, and when the ridiculous, pseudo-feminist, imitation "Real World" video snippets rolled before a few commercial breaks, Stec indeed did her job by saying a few profound words.

I'll admit, I honestly felt a great deal of school pride while watching one of my peers compete in such a unique arena. Hell, it took a lot of mind power to control my inherent urge to throw marshmallows at the TV set any time another contestant appeared on screen. (I am now proud to say that in addition to the fact that I once sat next to our illustrious starting quarterback in a film class, Kim Stec is a dear friend of one of my dear friends. Undoubtedly, both haven't the slightest idea who I am.)

Much to my dismay, however, Stec was unceremoniously left by the wayside along with the 41 other contestants who failed to make the exclusive early top 10 cut.

And I'm so glad. Thank God Stec, a mighty Michigan Wolverine like us all, didn't have to go through the humiliating tasks of politically correctly answering a bunch of insipid questions, or singing the love theme from this summer's action flick "Con Air" on live global television. This last act actually was the unwelcome talent of one of the 10 finalists, I kid you not.

As the millennium nears and Miss America begins knocking on the door of its eighth decade as the grandmommy of beauty pageants, the festival is struggling to reinvent itself. Among the so-called innovations in this year's event, whose official slogan was something like Everything Old is New Again, whatever that is supposed to mean: a talk show-like interview segment instead of the old Big Question, and - gasp - the young ladies' first-time-ever option to wear two-piece swimsuits.

Right, so to somehow increase respectability, the pageant now has a more serious question session and sexier bathing suits. That follows.

The Miss America Pageant (like any national sporting league or the motion picture academy, I might add) is a private organization - a TV ratings-hungry corporation that determines its own rules and is responsible for its own publicity and marketability. In order to provide a desperately needed boost to the latter, the pageant this year spiced up its presentation on the hip ABC network (hence the "Monday Night Football"-esque contestant bios and snazzy graphics with lines swirling across the screen), and it is billing itself as a scholarship provider, first and foremost. Yeah, and so is the Michigan Athletic Department.

Imagine, therefore, the relative Prozac consumption of event organizers in the moments after they learned that Miss Vermont has a taboo navel ring that can now be seen by the world when she wears her bikini (oops!), and that Miss Pennsylvania sports a tattoo somewhere on her body. Needless to say, neither woman was a finalist. Still it is nice to see someone injecting a little novelty into this awfully tired piece of exploitation. After all, the assorted oddities pageant planners inserted this year just weren't at all impressive.

In the end, of course, the highest honors went to Miss Illinois, Kate Shindle, herself a Big Ten student out there in Evanston. She was a worthy victor, I should concede; she seemed like a very nice person. So congratulations Miss Illinois. And congratulations Northwestern. For your sake, Wildcats, you'll need all the victories you can conjure to stop this Wolverine train from steamrolling into Pasadena.

- Joshua Rich can be reached over e-mail at jmrich@umich.edu

09-15-97