Better late than never...

I'm usually late on starting/doing things, and I guess this is no exception. I had a really hard time trying to figure out what I wanted to write about. I finally did come up with a topic, but before I get to that I think I should write a tiny bit about me...(skip it if you're not interested - I wouldn't be interested if I were you, either.)

My name is Maureen, I'm 20 years old and I'm in my third year at Northeastern University (making me a Middler.) I'm majoring in journalism. Writing my own blog is a requirement for one of my journalism classes, and it's something I'm totally new to. Right now, I'm in classes full-time and I also have two part-time jobs. I basically spend all day running around to and from work and classes, but I don't mind it.

As for this blog, I haven't really figured out what to write about on a regular basis, but here are some things that I'm interested in:

• Fashion/shopping
• Animals
• Things going on around Boston
• The (in my opinion, awful) way that women are portrayed in the media
• Movies
• Books

...obviously I have more interests than that, but I think those are some of the things I'd be likely to focus on for the purposes of this blog.

And now that that's out of the way, here's something that caught my attention today - This year's Miss America competition, which, like just about everything else, has been turned into a reality show. The premise of the show is that the contestants all live under the same roof for four weeks while training for the pageant, which will be aired live on TLC on January 26th.

Personally, I don't think I've ever watched an entire Miss America pageant in my life, just because I was never interested. I can see the appeal to doing a reality show to get more people interested, but what struck me as odd was the way that the show was advertised. Here's a clip of one of the commercials that was running on TLC before the show premiered:

I think it's a pretty funny commercial. I think beauty pagaents in general seem to have a pretty bad reputation these days, and the stereotype of women parading around in stiff updos and sequined prom-esque gowns probably doesn't help. Ratings for the pagaent have been considerably low in recent years, and the Miss America Organization even shortened the program in 2004 to help boost ratings. It makes sense to do something to try and change that stereotype, so hey, why not make a reality show?


But I think it's strange that the Miss America Organization, which boasts about its extensive scholarship program, and claims to have

"maintained a tradition for many decades of empowering young women to achieve
their personal and professional goals, while providing a forum in which to
express their opinions, talent and intelligence"(Source)

chose to publicize the show in this way, making fun of stereotypical pageant contestants, making them seem gaudy, spacey and clueless.


Another interesting development for this year's pagaent is that each contestant, searchable by state, has a profile on TLC's web site. There are forums for people to discuss the contestants, and this year for the first time, people will be able to vote online for their favorite contestant. The winner of that vote will automatically become one of the finalists.


I'm pretty sure that I still won't watch, but I wonder if this interactive approach will get other people more interested?