It seems that
Miss California, the conservative right’s new standard-bearer for the sanctity of marriage, got an extra assist from the state pageant’s promoters in her recent failed run for Miss USA:
They paid for her boob job.
Could be in part why they’re so cross that she
scotched her chances of winning by declaring herself an opponent of gay marriage.
But more important: Is that kosher?
If beauty pageant promoters can buy new breasts for their contestants, how’s that different from teams feeding steroids to their athletes? OK, steroids are banned and breast enhancements are as American as apple pie, but they’re both performance enhancers. Looks like a fairness—or fakeness—issue to me.
(AP Photo)
After all, Miss USA contestants aren't wearing those swimsuits to show off their breaststroke. The ideal competitor offers as little as possible to distract from her good looks—including talent, personality or opinions.
So Carrie Prejean was all but disqualified for saying something controversial, but having a surgically improved bust is cool?
Sure, says Shanna Moakler, co-director of the Miss California Pageant; it’s now normal for ambitious contestants to opt for a bigger cup size on the way to a crown. “Breast implants in pageants is not a rarity. It’s definitely not taboo. It’s very common,” she tells Access Hollywood.
“I don’t personally have them,” the former contestant adds bitchily, “but you know—they are.”
Indeed, even porn star-size implants are ubiquitous now, especially in Southern California and Miami, where store windows sport bikini-clad manikins that are ringers for Jenna Jameson. (In America, everything is bigger: cars, houses, breasts.) Who can resist, walking down the street, mentally counting: Real, fake, real, fake.
But in a beauty contest? How’s that different from
Barry Bonds? And in a spokesman for the purity of marriage, it's rich. Announcing that she’s doing
a new commercial for the National Organization for Marriage—the same outfit whose earlier ad was parodied deliciously by
Stephen Colbert—Prejean told the
Today show piously this morning that marriage is "something that is very dear to my heart" and she's in Washington to help save it.
Just what we need: a surgically-enhanced Joan of Arc, martyred for standing up for her “traditional values,” leading the charge against the same-sex infidels on cable TV. Colbert
should be so lucky.
