itsrowdy801 wrote:Queen of the Clouds wrote:itsrowdy801 wrote:
Y'alllll. No word whether Miss USA Org will follow suit but I can't say I'm in love with this change
I cannot express how opposed to this I am. I'm so tired of this inclusion at all costs. What happens when a mother wins Miss Universe, what happens to her kid? They get left without a mother for a year in their home country, who watches them? Or they are brought to NYC to adopt a whole new country as their own and are thrown into the NYC schooling system without any friends, and possibly not even being able to speak the language or understand the culture? Not to mention the xenophobia and discrimination that immigrant children experience at school, especially non-white immigrants. And what school do they go to? NYC public schools are mainly low-quality, and if not public school, who pays their private school tuition? Do the children live in the Miss Universe apartment too? Is there even enough room for kids? NYC apartments are notoriously tiny and from what I've seen of the Miss Universe apartment, it is not that big.
Now I am less fussed about the married women part, but I think the same questions can be asked. Is her husband left behind in their home country, or does he come with her? Does that mean he lives in the Miss Universe apartment too? What will he do all day, will he have to get a job? There is no Mr. Universe companion title. Obviously there have been titleholders with boyfriends, but a boyfriend and a husband are very different things, and I know I wouldn't want my husband to pack up and move to a different country for a year without me, especially if we have kids together nonetheless.
But what I am most worried about is what this means for what a titleholder's reign will look like. I have been bored to death by Harnaaz's reign, and we all know that IMG has been awful with giving their queens things to do, but I thought it looked like they were improving with Andrea until seeing the things they have Harnaaz do. To be completely honest, I have been moving more and more towards being solely a fan of Miss France since winning that title actually still means something. Nowadays, it seems winning Miss USA means you can compete at Miss Universe and make TikToks from your LA condo all day, while winning Miss Universe means you can post on Instagram from NYC all day and appear as a special guest at Miss South Africa and Puteri Indonesia one time each. Allowing married women and mothers to compete in Miss Universe makes me think that they have no intention to speed up the schedule of a Miss Universe, and that 90% of what they'll be doing is posting on social media from their apartment – which would explain why it is suddenly not too much to allow mothers and married women to compete. A mother would have never been able to handle winning Miss Universe in the Trump era because their queens actually DID things – and that is one of the main reasons why I am so against the new rules in Miss France, since their queens DO still actually do things.
Sometimes rules exist for logistical reasons and not because we live in a big, bad, scary, sexist world.
That's actually a really good point. To a certain extent, we could blame the lack of activities on the pandemic, but as we get more and more out of the woods from Covid, that's becoming less of an excuse. That said, I have appreciated the fact that they've sent Elle to events like the Superbowl parties and movie premieres, and I hope they continue to ramp that up in the future, but you're absolutely right that this change could be a signal that they're not planning on doing so - just having "Miss" Universe drag her husband and children to NYC and start a mommy blog in the apartment instead of actually going anywhere exciting
I think blaming the lack of activities on the pandemic made sense towards the end of Zozi's reign and for most of Asya's reign, but I remember when Andrea was crowned Miss Universe, right after arriving in NYC she was back to having what seemed to be a packed schedule. Now we're even further removed from the peak of the pandemic, and it seems we're going in the opposite direction. Harnaaz has really done nothing of note imo, Elle started out strong but it seems she's fizzling out and does nothing anymore besides post cringe TikToks as IG reels.
I feel like the only posts I see from the Miss USA IG account nowadays is shit like this:
Now, Miss USA hasn't said anything about this, so I'm not going to clown the Miss USA Organization as hard, but the MUO is basically sending out a message to me that we should expect even less from future titleholders than we currently do. If that ends up being the case, I think it's becoming more and more likely I end up solely a fan of Miss France and not anything else. If it weren't for its history, I'm starting to wonder if Miss Universe should even be considered the premier international beauty pageant anymore.