Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Beauty Pageants

Episode Date: March 7, 2023

As Keenan Thompson said in a recent SNL parody of the Miss Universe pageant, "Welcome back to Miss Universe, one of several shows still on the air where we rank women. But it's not what you think—we do it based off of looks." Welp when you put it that way :/ In our humble little opinion, it's hard to believe that the conformist, objectifying, and sometimes downright exploitative "beauty contest" business—perpetuated by the likes of Donald Trump and P.T. Barnum (yep, the circus guy)—is still a thing. Beauty pageants can be prettyyyyyyy cringe, but are they dangerously cultish? This week, Amanda and Isa aim to figure that out! To support Sounds Like A Cult on Patreon, keep up with our live show dates, see Isa's live comedy, buy a copy of Amanda's book Cultish, or visit our website, click here!

The views expressed on this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable facts. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Hi, Issa. Hi, Amanda. This is Abby from Houston, Texas. And I think the cultiest thing about beauty pageants is that they want to promote beauty, but yeah, it's all fake and they don't promote any natural beauty. I know somebody who does this full time and she got a boob job, nose job,

and then also got fake teeth as well. Hi, my name is Catherine. I'm from Ottawa, Ontario. And I think the cultiest thing about beauty pageants is that if you were to ask a contestant why they do beauty pageants, they'd probably say something along the lines of empowerment or for scholarship money. But deep down, they know that if they told the truth, which is it's a contest that judges you based on your looks, which you have no control over, it sounds really bad. So they have to justify it not only to you, but to themselves.

This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cults we all follow. I'm Issa Medina and I'm a comedian touring all over the country. I'm Amanda Montel, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. Every week on our show, we discuss a different zeitgeisty group that puts the cult in culture from spiritual influencers to Starbucks to try and answer the big questions. This group sounds like a cult, but isn't really? I was born excited about this episode and I can't believe you don't have a personal connection to it. I don't, which is like why I'm now eating pasta while we record the episode

because now I'm happy. Oh, I thought you were gonna say which is why I don't have an unhealthy relationship to my own beauty. Oh no. Oh god, I don't know how this began. I mean, I feel like I know how it began because you just told me that when you were a kid, they would send letters to your home asking you if you wanted to be in a pageant. Yeah, and I was not hot enough as an 11 year old and you never forget when you weren't hot. Like I wasn't hot yesterday, so I had to use an Instagram filter on my Instagram story and never forget. Never forget. Being ugly is traumatizing and we've all felt that way before. We have and the earlier it starts, the more cult like that feeling can get.

Yeah, but yeah, I problematically always glommed on to like the hot girl in school as my best friend starting in middle school. And so I remember my middle school bestie in sixth grade got the same flyers in the mail inviting her to be like Little Miss Baltimore County or whatever the fuck. And she actually entered because she had boobs and I think I could enter. Now I have boobs. Yeah, now I have boobs. Now that you have boobs, you can be the pageant queen you never wear. But I remember she came in like fourth place and her confidence was so high. She was like, the pageant system is, she was like, the pageant system is, what is it, crooked? The pageant system is- I cannot remember words lately. I've been smoking too much weed so my vocabulary the other

day. I just haven't been remembering. Well, the other day I saw an umbrella outside of a restaurant and I was like, what's this flag doing here? Get this flag out of my way. It was an umbrella. I lost my language. It's the weed. The systems are corrupt. Corrupt. I was like, she was like, the pageant system is crooked, cooked, fucked. I don't know. Corrupt. I just said it. I know, but there's some monosyllabic slang term. Probably what like Trump would call Hillary. Yeah, crooked Hillary. But now I'm thinking like every time you say crooked, I'm like crooked media and I'm like, that's just another production. Because we're brainwashed by the cult of podcasting. But anyway, she was like, the pageant system is fucked. If I didn't win, then they don't know

what real beauty is, but then I spent my whole adolescence obsessed with beauty pageants. Well, I was actually going to ask that because I feel like you were like associated yourself with the pretty girls. Why didn't you sign up for the beauty pageant yourself? Well, because I associated myself with them because I felt insecure about my own looks. It was like, I was always in some sort of duo where now the meme on TikTok is like, there are no two pretty best friends. I embodied that because like, this is not me feeling sorry for myself, but I was like the nerdy one. And my best friend was always the sharp one. And by nerdy, you mean ugly. Well, cute. You know, you were always cute. We're all cute. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But I don't know what happened in my childhood. Maybe it was being like the youngest of 13 cousins and getting bullied, but like getting my head flushed down a toilet at one point in my life. No. Yeah. But I never associated beauty to value. And I feel like I've worked my whole life in almost a drastically unnecessarily opposite way. I'm like, there is no way I will ever associate beauty to value. And now it's almost like biting me in the ass because I'm like, I need a date. Like I wake up and I leave the house immediately. And that's not, I'm not saying that to be cool. No, that's like the really healthy and I, and I have noticed that about you. I mean, during our live show,

I spent three hours getting ready and you showed up in corduroy and no makeup. Yeah. And then I was insecure the entire time we were in the green room because I was like, fuck, Amanda looks so hot. And I rolled out of bed and I'm like, I think it's important to find like a balance. Absolutely. That's the long and the short of it. But I think the reason that I ultimately try and disassociate beauty from like your value is because as women, and we talked about this in the skincare episode, our beauty is also associated with our age. And something that I've always realized is that like, if you age, which you will do, you're lucky, your value goes down. And so I'm like, if I value my beauty, my value will inevitably go down anyway. So I might as

well focus on other aspects of myself. That's like extremely self actualized. And I wonder too, if it has to do with the fact that like, it's just such like a disgustingly American capitalist Western value to obsess over youth. But the thing is, it's not like it makes me feel better. You know what I mean? That's why I think it's supposed to find the balance because I'm like, I still want to feel good. Like if I don't take time washing my face and getting dressed and sometimes I'll walk out and I'll feel amazing until I like catch myself in a reflection. So that's the thing. It's like who's conditioning you then to associate beauty with value and who is conditioning you then to think that you need it in order to feel better. Like it's so hard to unpack all of this stuff to

like the very, very bottom of the suitcase. But growing up for, you know, whatever reason, like a complex combination of factors, patriarchy, youth, centric society, etc. I truly was like super fascinated with beauty contests and I would watch Miss USA and I would watch Miss America. I would watch toddlers and tiaras on TLC. I loved Miss Congeniality. I loved Little Miss Sunshine. But the earnest coverage of these beauty pageants, I would watch much in the way that people watch True Crime. Like I was rubbernecking at this shit. It was a horror show. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you never participated. Hell no. Well, I was rejecting it before it could reject me. I feel like that's what I did too, though, with beauty. That's why I'm ugly.

Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no. Face for radio, baby. Face for podcasting. I'm not actually ugly. And I know that. No, no, he's hot. I like to make little jokes. I think our friendship was fundamentally founded on the fact that we were both like, oh, we're equally hot. Oh my God. Thank you so much. I thought that's where you were going with it, but I didn't know. And like, I appreciate that. I appreciate that you went there. Yeah. Yeah. We were like at a pregame where like everyone was ugly and we were like the only two hot people in the room. We were like, we have to be friends. Oh my God. Just kidding. To our friends who actually don't listen to our podcast. Those friends. Oh, those friends. But I, yeah,

I don't know. I mean, I have like obviously a very complicated relationship with beauty having decided early on, like this is not going to be my strength in life. But at the same time, I worked in the beauty industry. I watched these beauty pageants. My feminism and politics prevent me from approving of these institutions. And yet my self-esteem and my like just general vulnerability as a human prevents me from being able to truly embody that I don't need it myself. Yeah. I also think it's really funny that today of all days you like hadn't gotten Botox in so long and then we're recording the episode on beauty pageants and you're like, my face is swollen because I got Botox. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, this is my excuse and maybe I'm

lying to myself, but mostly I just want Botox because I have really, really intense frown lines from writing and thinking really hard all day. And I don't want to look angry. No, that totally makes sense. I am angry, but I don't want to look it. Yeah. I mean, I also want to again reemphasize maybe in a different way that just because you ignore these like cultural requirements in a way of like beauty and beauty standards or just because I ignore them doesn't mean that I don't feel pressure by them. Totally. It kind of reminds me of like freezing your eggs as a woman. Like if you ever want to like have kids later in life, people are like, freeze your eggs in my whole life. I was like, Oh, I don't really care. I don't really care. And then the other night I was watching the

Mindy project and I was like, Oh my God, I got freeze those puppies because you run out of time. My whole life, I'm just like, you guys just wait, just wait until I wake up and do a skincare routine and put makeup on and get a haircut and go on a jog. It's game over for you. But it's like, I've been doing that for a minute now. It's kind of interesting to analyze your attitude from that perspective though, because that's kind of the optimism that sometimes gets people into cults where you're just like, Okay, today I'm not my best self, but tomorrow I will be. Whereas I'm just like, Okay, actually, I know for a fact that I will never be able to win in this particular area of society that being like normative beauty pageant hotness. So I'm just going to like step

back. Yeah, I feel like moral of the story here is like, I should get Botox ASAP, freeze my eggs, get a haircut, go on a jog. You're like, I can still beat it. No, I don't want to beat it, but I want to do what you did. Give up, but be hot. The goal is give up and be hot. Yeah, you a girl who can do both. Today we're talking about the Cult of Beauty pageants and listen, it's a perfectly timed recording because that SNL parody of the Miss Universe pageant where all of the girls were announcing themselves and screaming at the top of their lungs just aired. Yes, which I literally did not know of until we sat down to record this and I was like, I don't know anything about this other than the deep, deep research that we did.

And so I had to like YouTube that video. It was insane. These women are screaming their country and then France poor, poor girl. France. For a thing, all these ladies in skintight dresses too tight for them to be able to project properly are like screaming at the top of their lungs as they announced their countries and France didn't get a good enough breath. She was probably panicking because she was fucking nervous and she had to announce France and she ended up sounding like a squawking bird, but it's okay. It's okay because they don't have SNL in France. So she didn't see her own parody. We squawk nervously all the time on this podcast, but we're in control so we can cut it out. And here's the thing is France famously one syllable.

A one syllable word. You only have one syllable. And you have one shot to get it right. Colombia is like three. So you could be like, Colombia, Colombia. You could end strong, but France, she had one shot and she fucked it up. So we are going to analyze the cult of beauty pageants because they are culty because they are heliculty. And I was reminded of that when I watched those clips from the Miss USA pageant because as you also observed, it's 2023 and we still host contests where we pit women against one another based on how they look in a dress and how they look in a bikini. But something that we were already talking about before we recorded the episode is that like these women are doing it because they want to. But why do they want to?

And that's the whole thing with cults. Yeah, it's true. To get started, we wanted to give you guys like a brief history of where did beauty pageants come from and when did they start and when did they get as culty as they are today? The origins of the beauty pageant industrial complex can be traced back to ancient history. In ancient Egypt, there was a contest of physique called the Eoandria. If anyone speaks ancient Greek, feel free to correct my pronunciation, which according to this one PBS article was held yearly at an Athenian festival and people were judged based on their appearance, but this contest was allegedly only for men. They are a part of Greek mythology and according to a legend, a poor mortal, herder of goats, Alexandros, was called upon to settle a

dispute among the goddesses. Who was the most beautiful? Hera, Aphrodite or Athena. And we still don't know because they didn't have Instagram. I am a comedian as we know and I perform all over so if you want to check out my comedy live, go to my Instagram, a-o-slick. I am dying at you telling this story from Greek mythology because I love drunk history. Oh yeah. And that was giving drunk history, but instead of having odied on alcohol, you've just eaten a lot of pasta. Yeah, and also like these Greek words are hard to pronounce. But yeah, so while the ancient Greeks memorialized and miss the complicated relationship between competition and beauty, there is actually no historical evidence that they held beauty contests

for women in real life. It's really European festivals dating to the medieval era that provide the most direct lineage to the beauty pageants of today. For example, English May Day celebrations always involved a selection of queens, which is kind of like a beauty pageant, but you have to kind of be born into it. Yeah, although I don't know if you've looked at much medieval portraiture recently, but those girls were ugly. Not giving. Yeah. All right. That's a quick and dirty summary, but let's talk about the modern day era. Absolutely. I didn't know this. It wasn't until 1854 when P.T. Barnum, the circus guy from P.T. Barnum and Bailey's Ringley Brothers Circus, founded what we now think of as the modern American beauty pageant. They are a fucking circus. Yeah. And if they started in

circuses, I can't imagine how abusive they actually were. Wait, why are you laughing? Because I don't think beauty pageants started in actual circus. They were just started by a guy who trafficked in circus culture. Okay. I feel like the first one was like at a circus. I mean, circus, beauty pageant, tomato, tomato. Yeah. But they started in the circus. Well, I mean, according to us now, it was as ridiculous as a fucking circus because in those early beauty pageant, the prize was a dowry. If the winner was single or if the winner was married, it was a diamond tiara. Oh, do you think it was made of real diamonds? Maybe they don't make things like they used to. Well, according to our research at the time, the pageant was not successful and

it didn't learn respectable girls. So I don't think it was real diamonds. Yeah, probably not. Yeah. Because I mean, it makes sense. It's like, if it started in a circus, it makes sense. Like if it started by a circus guy, then it probably wasn't very respectable. Like at the time, I feel like something that girls were more focused on was getting a husband. Yeah. Like coming out balls, debutants. Yeah. It was the bottom shelf version of a debutant ball. So P.T. Barnum later tried this whole beauty contest industry again, but he changed the format to a picture photo contest, which was much more successful. He did this by, according to Slate Magazine, combining lowbrow entertainment with the appeal of highbrow culture, which we do love.

Highbrow, lowbrow. Yeah. Fucking caviar on a trisket. And I'm getting my brows done today. You're taking your lowbrows to higherbrows. I don't even know why we need to do our brows. Like I made the appointment this morning and then I was like looking at them in the mirror and I was like, they look fine. They do look fine. This is so ironic that we're both doing these like completely gratuitous beauty treatments on the day of our beauty pageants episode. I know. Hey culties, my name is Sophie. I'm calling from Canada. And I think that one of the cultiest things about beauty pageants is that they'll often call themselves scholarship programs or have scholarships as a prize to justify their existence. However, the money that people spend

and fundraise to even just attend and participate in the events will usually far outweigh the amount of money that they'll gain from winning if they even win. Hi, my name is Rui. I'm calling from Vermont. And I think the cultiest thing about beauty pageants is that young, young children are taught that they have to suppress their emotions when they lose or even when they, when they can't feel their full emotions, they're supposed to put on a fake smile and that can lead to a lot of emotional and behavioral problems because the kids are not being able to express how they really feel. So according to that same slate article in the 1920s, they introduced bathing beauty contest. And then this bathing beauty contest became super popular in resort

towns and all across the country. It's like the old version of like an annoying guys explore page, you know, it's like full of bikini pics. They would just go to the contest in person in the good old days. It's almost better that they had to like be live and in person to see the women in the bathing. So your face, buddy, exactly. It's like, you want to see this, you got to show up. But now men can just like look at women online and you don't know what they're doing at home with those pictures. Yeah, back in the day, you had to go in person and not touch yourself or else you'd get arrested. Okay, so it was 1921 when the inaugural Miss America pageant was hosted. So that's only about a hundred years ago. That pageant took place in Atlantic City. And according

to slate, the contest began as a way to extend the city's tourist season past the usual Labor Day drop off and was originally called the fall frolic. A woman named Margaret Gorbin took home the ultimate prize. According to that slate article, she was 16 years old, five one and 108 pounds. That was the precedent set for the American beauty pageant contest, a kid who's 100 pounds. So beauty pageants have for 100 years now simply been a way to exploit women's bodies for profit. Yeah, and you can see that today because it's like if they're setting the beauty standard to be 108 pounds, which can be maybe normal for a 16 year old girl, but as we become women, we grow hips and boobs and some of us have to pay for them. That's true. But I don't even know what

it is about my body. But like, I feel like I don't look like I'm gaining weight, but I am gaining pounds. Like every time I step on the scale, I think as you grow older, you just like your weight shift shifts. And so for them to set this as the standard began, I think this whole toxic culture of women feeling like they need to remain the weight of a teenage girl. You know what I also think is so toxic about televised beauty pageants and the way that I consumed them as an adolescent is that like they are this spectacle that feels really, really patriarchal, but everyone participating in it, except maybe the people profiting at the very, very top and we'll talk about who some of those people are later. Most of the people participating in it, whether they're like actually

in the contest or watching it or women, the people judging it or women, but we're all judging this standard that was like really set by fucking PT Barnum in the late 1800s. And there's something really disturbing about the way that I used to engage with these pageants, because I was so bitter that I was not able to meet the standard that I ended up feeling like a lot of resentment toward these women who are competing in the contest, which isn't healthy for anyone. Yeah. And that makes sense that you mostly blame women because a common misconception is that men run the beauty pageant industry, but the reality is a lot of women are the judges and are the ones running the whole practice. According to Hillary Levy Friedman's book,

The Complicated Rain of Beauty Pageants, she collected program books from the 1970s up until present day and the makeup of judges and panels, the vast majority are women, not men, but that doesn't mean that they're not perpetuating the culture and norms pushed by men. What I think is so culty and disturbing about who the cult leaders might be in the beauty pageant space is the same thing I think is so culty and disturbing about like who the leaders might be in a lot of sort of commodified feminist, white feminist spaces from the skincare industry to the diet industry to a lot of fitness spaces to MLMs. It's like, where did these beauty standards and body standards come from? And even if you see a panel of women judges, I can't help but think

that they're just like conduits for a beauty standard that has been set problematically by men. Yeah, because I mean, where does programming come from? Programming comes from institutions that have money to be able to advertise and market and magazines. And before the 1950s, the majority of companies were run by men. They still are. And they still are. But everything started with the patriarchy. So it's like, I feel like I sound so redundant, but it's literally like the beauty industry is financed by men. Absolutely. So in 1952, Miss USA is born and it's the contest that includes Miss USA and Miss Universe. And it was started by a company called Catalina Swimwear as a commercial vehicle to promote its swimwear line. I mean, it makes complete fucking sense.

Beauty pageants are essentially just big like billboards, you know? Yeah, I mean, of course it makes sense. Like Victoria's Secret fashion show, like that's just like a huge promotional event. We really should do a whole episode on the cult of Victoria's Secret because I would want to make it more like investigative and like actually find out what's on behind the scenes. Yeah, I watched like a little mini documentary about it the other day. It's hella disturbing. It's like borderline Jeffrey Epstein disturbing, to be honest. Anyway, another topic for another day. This is where it starts to get really sketchy and gross. In my opinion, in 1996, Donald Trump bought the Miss Universe organization. He owned it until 2015 when he

was forced to sell it. But in my little baby personal opinion, I just think that anything that Trump likes enough to own is an immediate red flag. Yeah, I mean, he is not a great guy. According to Kerry Prijan's memoir, who also not a great gal, but she said in her memoir that he divided the contestants between hot and not. And she was so grateful to be in like the hot aspect, but you couldn't imagine how the women who like were put in the knot were. And then he would go backstage and inspect the quote unquote goods. And I can only imagine what inspect even means. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. To say that anything Donald Trump touches, turns to corrupt is not even a political statement. In my opinion, I am literally making an ad hominem attack on him.

In my opinion, he is just like such a disgustingly amoral, misogynist capitalist cult leader. Yeah. And I mean, you could also say this about him before he was president. Like he was a whole man and business shithead before he was president. Oh, nothing changed about him when he became president. And clearly no one cared about this history. No one cared that he has always been a key investor in the multi-level marketing industry. He just like has his grubby little pause in all of these cult like corners of patriarchal society that I'm just like, bro, if I didn't hate the beauty pageant industrial complex before this is like the only red flag I really need. I do have to wonder if it's possible to compete in one of these men run pageants, but still have it feel empowering since

it's all run by women like the day to day. Like there has to be a reason women stay in this cult. Yeah. And I'm torn because it's like, I don't want to write off the entire beauty pageant industry as a get the fuck out just because I don't, I'm not hot enough to be in it. Sometimes that's what you're about to do, girlie. Because before we even recorded, you were like, I get the fuck out. And I was like, I was like, let's give it a chance. I'm just like any cult that I'm not hot enough to be in or lead is a get the fuck out. Yeah. And I think we have to look at it deeper because just because you don't like it doesn't mean that there aren't women who do like it. I do think it's just the structure of it sets up a

organization that can easily take advantage of women. And I think specifically highlighting how it's women in lower income areas or more rural areas who still are attracted to the idea of beauty pageants. I think that sets up an even more toxic standard because it's these women with less resources. And so what is someone with more resources going to be able to do? Take advantage of that. Totally. And the other thing is I don't want to suggest that people who enter beauty pageants are these fembots who don't notice that the patriarchy has brainwashed them. That's not fair. I just think some women, and this is hard for me to say because it's not like I agree with it, but some women like this standard. No. Some women like the standard set by the patriarchy

and literally agree with them. So it's like if you vibe with that, why would you fight it? I mean, it's funny that you say all of those things because anecdotally, when I think back on my middle school best friend who was briefly involved with the pageant circuit, she was like lower income, white, beautiful girl who kind of like fits this bill of a lot of the type of people who join cults. Like some of the institutions in this country really do work for them like white supremacy and beauty standards and whatnot, but they're not making as much money as they would maybe like to or they don't feel as loved in general as they'd like to. They feel left behind. And so that combination of optimism and pain can really position themselves to want

to succeed in a cult industry like this. Yeah. And beauty pageants have such a clear trajectory to success. Now pageant recruiter might find a girl in the mall and love bomb her with praise about how pretty she is and then dangle the promises of friends and scholarship money and that she can promote world peace all in front of her so that they can then put her on a conveyor belt that might keep her competing in pageants and spending a lot of money to do so and developing serious insecurities about her appearance for the next 10 years. Right. Right. Right. There is the promise of this like very linear path to glamour and that's the thing is like I saw in a lot of the young people that I grew up with who wanted to join pageants some of the same stuff that I saw

in theater kids or like in sororities. It's just with this all American glamorized twist. I mean we always talk about how like there is a cult for everyone theater kids was the cult for me sororities was a cult for you. Girl scouts. I'm one foot in one foot out. Yeah. You're always you're always just flirting with these cults. You're never married to them. But yeah. I mean it reminds me a lot of theater kids and what do all of these cults have in common is that like they help you get out of like your reality. Yeah. They're escapist. Beauty pageants start at a local level but if you succeed you can go to Miss USA and if you succeed there you can be Miss Universe. Totally. So it's like there's always a bigger and better thing ahead.

Hello. So I live in a country where beauty pageants are like one of the biggest things here. It's treated as like a national sport. So I think the cultiest thing about beauty pageant culture here in the Philippines is that there's a whole crab mentality to it where if we get like certain contestants who do not make it to like the final 15 or the final 20 in Miss Universe we put them down which is kind of awful. Hi. My name is Sophie and I'm from Ireland. I think the cultiest thing about beauty pageants is how they indoctrinate young susceptible children into the cults of patriarchy on the male gaze from such a young age even going so far as to offer prizes and prestige to whoever fits their twisted standards of beauty the best.

Let's talk about what makes that beauty pageant pipeline so very culty because the beauty pageant industry checks off a lot of culty boxes. First of all there's the conformity aspect. Obviously beauty pageants are all about putting this idealized image of femininity on stage and it reinforces that beauty standard on a worldwide level. Historians Colleen Ballerino and Richard Will have said in their writing whether the title is for Miss Universe or the Crooked Tree Cashew Queen because the local beauty pageants always have those funny titles. These contests showcase values concepts and behavior that exist at the center of a group sense of itself and exhibit values of morality, gender, and place. Yeah that makes sense to me because local beauty pageants

start at a local level. Everyone is competing showing off their talents and knowledge but then the person who succeeds is the person who generalizes it the best and then they get pushed on to the next level. Yeah it's like if you're to Oklahoma you will not go to nationals. Yes exactly and so of course that creates community and fosters like a sense of friendship and what's another word for community? Belonging connection. But that makes sense because then you have to like conform to your community so that you can properly represent that level and then conform at the next level and conform again and conform again. Right so it's almost like you have to become a stereotype of yourself like a parody of yourself dressed up in sequins and trying to get a crown.

It's really it's like drag but like earnest. Yes I was at drag brunch the other day and I was thinking about how some straight women complain on Twitter about how like straight women can't do drag and I'm like you literally have to drag all the time. You know what like literally when I wear a lot of makeup and I'm wearing an outfit that like doesn't really feel like me and I'm just wearing it because I think it's the right thing to wear to the event that I'm going to it feels like drag. Yeah I mean what is drag other than a satire of normative femininity and sometimes we satirize ourselves. Yes I've actually questioned if that's just like a genderqueer thing of like when I dress up a lot because I'm not used to dressing up. I'm like this is drag. Well maybe it's that just whenever

you're dressed like someone else in a hyper stylized exaggerated way that's a form of drag. Yeah and I think that's more so just because I'm not used to it. Well at a point wearing these extremely expensive outfits and wigs and eyelashes does start to feel normal because it's in your system. I mean I remember like the first time I watched toddlers and tiaras. I was so horrified at these like little itty bitty kids getting like fake teeth put in their mouth. It was a little device called a flipper. Yeah and they would get like a mold taken of their mouth because if they lost teeth it wouldn't look good on stage even though they were literally kids and kids lose their teeth. So they would spend like hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars not only on the

usual suspects like a manicure and a wig or whatever the fuck but for these bright white chick-lid-ass fake teeth called a flipper. Oh my god that is a wild thing. The whole child beauty pageant thing is almost like a whole different discussion because the exploitation element even for adults in beauty pageants is so extreme the core idea behind them being that women's bodies can be used for entertainment to treat a child's body as a form of entertainment and think that's normal and good is just beyond cult mentality. You know we were mentioning before how a lot of sort of like middle-class families lower-income families like my best friend in middle school are some of the people who often get involved with local beauty pageants but pageants

are so fucking cost prohibitive and expensive all of the shit you have to buy. Yeah it is a barrier to entry but it is also an exit cost. Famously what are you supposed to do with all those trophies? It costs not only money but time. Former beauty queen Maddie May stated in an ABC article that you're working crazy hours in ridiculous conditions. You need to present and look like a doll from 5 a.m. till 2 a.m. and keep that perfect look the entire time. Imagine how much hairspray you need for that. The ozone is not happy. I can't even it's like and it's a sort of thing where I mean at least my intuitive response is like well then just don't do it but if you're on a path where you've been doing pageants since you were like I don't know

fucking four years old and this is your trajectory and this is like your best ticket into the next step of your life. It's not so easy just to get out and like per your exit cost thing it's like you've already sunk so much into this quote-unquote cold. How are you supposed to just get out from there? Yeah and I think the financially scary part about beauty pageants is that when you start so young you have to buy new outfits consistently because your body is changing. Oh true. But then even as an adult you have to buy new outfits because it's like a new pageant. Oh it's a consumerist nightmare. Let's break some of the pageant numbers down. These numbers are according to a bustle article titled the cost of competing in beauty pageants is going to blow your sock

sock. Just kidding that's not what it's called. I really believe that it was like my sparkly little socks. Um but dresses cost between $700 and $1,000 off the rack. $5,000 bespoke. I literally don't even know what that means. Custom. Oh be spoken. Okay $8,000 to $10,000 for the major pageants. Then you have your pageant coach because as we know from miscongeniality you need a Michael Kaine. What? You need a Michael Kaine. No. Sorry that was me doing an impression. I did not know what you were doing. You need a Michael Kaine to take your doughnuts out of your pageant dress boob cups. That's good. Thank you. That can cost you at least $100 an hour and baby you're doing up to three sessions a week. $300 a week. If I were doing therapy as much as these pageant girls are

meeting with their pageant coaches I would be well. So true. That's like two therapy sessions a week. Bro. Hair and makeup is about $250 an hour. Spray tan is about $75. I think it's more these days. These days. Yeah. These days. Your wig, your weave, your extensions, $200 bare minimum. Bare minimum. And then of course there are entry fees which are about $300 to $500 on average although sometimes they can be as much as $1,000. Dude. I mean I just think of like all those pageant moms on toddlers and tiaras who are spending thousands and thousands of dollars to truly dress up like their teeny tiny daughter as a doll. And then what is that doing for their worth as they grow up? They think like I am someone who gets dolled up. I also don't understand what

the end goal is because I do understand in some cases when parents invest in their kids like sports for example. Like if you're investing in your son to play football you are investing in a head injury. One investing in a head injury but two in your little vein you think they're going to become like an NFL player and then there's a payback. But it's like a beauty pageant Miss Universe still isn't really like really that rich. Okay. So I think this is where they would serve you a thought terminating cliche and tell you that it's about the scholarship money. You know how sororities are always talking about the philanthropy. Oh yeah. It's philanthropy. I do it for philanthropy. It's like no bitch. You're paying for friends. You're paying to get drunk. Not to sound judgmental

but it's like there is always this sort of facade that's like the morally acceptable reason why you do this stuff but it's not really about that at the end of the day. Yeah. I just then don't see another reason as to like why parents would invest so much money. Like put that money in your kids college fund. You're like spending like the math doesn't check out. Are you paying taxes because I'm paying taxes and like who has this much money to blow on makeup. I know it like and won't work around logic that it's like you're spending thousands upon thousands of dollars to get scholarship money or like in Little Miss Sunshine. I think she won like a gift card to Arby's. Yeah. I don't know. Hey I'm Olivia from Louisville, Kentucky. I think the cultiest thing

about beauty pageants in particular children's beauty pageants is the overly sexual way that these little girls are often dressed with such heavy makeup, short dresses, heels, the language that is used about the way that they look, often the pressure from their parents to dress this way and get ready this way. I'm sure cannot be good for their mental health or their view of their bodies even as they grow into adults. Hi. This is Rachel calling from DC. I think the cultiest thing about beauty pageants is actually the behind the scenes pageant coaching consulting business. These participants will pay thousands of dollars to be coached by an expert air quotes on how to walk and do proper like steps and turns for their pageants, showcase on how to talk, respond

in interviews, and I just find that to be quite culty. Okay. So let's talk about some worst case scenarios because all of this is like shitty and a little bit culty, but some of it gets majorly culty. Yeah. In 1996, the Miss World Contest made international news. It was held in Bangalore, India that year, and it drew feminist and nationalist protesters who picketed the pageant and threatened mass suicide. According to the New York Times, one man died after setting himself on fire at the protest and about 1500 people were arrested during street protests. The protesters message was that women were being degraded, but also that the pageant threatened Indian culture with its importation of Western values. Yeah. I mean, it's actually

kind of fascinating how beauty pageants have been such a sore subject and critiqued by literally every feminist movement. I mean, I think of second wave feminism in September of 1968, an organization called the New York radical women organized a zap protest outside a Miss America pageant. And that was a protest that was like a positive thing. And obviously this protest was really, really fraught and led to some extremely negative consequences. But I think all in all, it just goes to demonstrate like the polarized political cultishness that can come out of something as seemingly innocent as a beauty pageant. Yeah. Because I mean, according to Hilary Levy Friedman, pageants did come after the ratification of the 19th amendment. A year later,

that's when Miss America pageants started, they got their idea of the sashes from the suffragettes. So it always has been this thing that comes from social uprising. Well, all these feminist movements are like a double-edged sword because the suffragettes were, you know, trying to get women the vote, but they were trying to get white women the vote. Yeah. You know, and so like maybe they shouldn't. Maybe everybody should vote. Maybe we should get a national holiday to vote. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Maybe it should be like we're listening to what I was saying. And then it clicked. Yeah. I'm just like, let's just state all of our political policy ideas. Like, yeah. Yeah. Like maybe Amazon should go fuck us out.

I'll promote nothing. But like we were saying before, it's just all of these culty examples demonstrate how beauty pageants seem like they're a good thing for women. Yeah. And despite the culture that perpetuates beauty pageants, especially the pageants that were run in the Trump-owned era, there aren't many allegations of sexual misconduct. We had trouble finding them. But something that we did find was that in 2018, a beauty queen turned in her crown after a Me Too joke was made on stage at a Miss Massachusetts pageant. So that just kind of shows the culture that is happening with the Me Too movement in association to the beauty. It's being mocked. Yeah. That said, we did find a few abuse allegations. But in 2018, Maddie May,

who was a former pageant competitor from Australia, recalled in an ABC interview a moment where a sponsor who was accommodating several of the competitors hid cameras in all of their rooms to like spy on them. Fucked up and literally illegal. Literally so gross. Another example comes from 2020 when two contestants from the Miss Europe continental pageant named Rowan Rice and Atiya Elena alleged that they were treated aggressively, were regularly yelled at. One woman was allegedly assaulted by an organizer and were not given enough food, water, or bathroom breaks at the pageant. It just sounds like a lot of these industries, like I think of like the cult of ballet or like high fashion modeling news industries where women's bodies are objectified

and commodified such that, you know, they can be treated as less than human. Yeah. It reminds me of the movement kind of happening right now in Hollywood with like sex scenes in filming for TV or movies. There's like a big push on having a consultant on set because before there just wasn't. And these people are like borderline naked in front of hundreds of people on set. Yeah. And doing like very intimate scenes. Now they have intimacy coordinators. Yeah. And it's like maybe there should be just coordinators at these pageants that make sure that everything's running smoothly. I don't know. I feel like if you brought in someone who was going to try to make the pageant world like less problematic, they would be like, I don't know where to begin. Yeah. It's like when

the government hires federal consultants to fix like, I don't know, the metro in LA and they invest like hundreds of millions of dollars. And then the consultants are like, actually, no solution. Thanks for the money though, Kings. Truly. I just feel like they, I don't know, a consultant would be like bathing suit contests are bad for women. Like I don't know. I get rid of it. Exactly. That's an episode we should do like the cult of consulting because consulting is like, okay, I'm giving you all this money for you to be like, actually, you have to fix it or there's no solution. I feel like we've covered kind of the ins and outs of the beauty pageant complex from our cult lens. I think maybe it's time to get to the verdict.

Yeah. And we covered it as best we could for like a one hour episode of a podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Hello. It's a podcast. And I think it's a watch your back. Well, let me ask you. Let me ask you. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's like the precom of sounds like a cult. You can't just say it without me asking you. It was a joke. Okay. Go ask. Out of these three cult categories, do you think that beauty pageants are a living life? Oh, watch your back. Or get the back out. Oh, I don't know. I think that they are a heavy watch your back. Because I do think that if you are watching your back, you know, as we say on the podcast,

it can just be a fun hobby. It can be almost like a sport, you know, like if you enjoy those standards of beauty that are set by the beauty industry, and you also enjoy going to the pageants, then you are really interested in a scholarship. Yes. Then do it as a hobby, you know, and like do it as long as it's fun. And then you can even turn it into a career if you are not getting, you know, taken advantage of. What is even the career? I mean, you get crowned and then you have kind of like a royal family style advocacy project. I honestly don't know what it was before social media, but now I think it's just influencer. Yeah, I was just thinking like, I wonder why there haven't been more feminist activist groups who've tried to be ugly.

Yeah, make beauty pageants uglier. Come to Echo Park. Being ugly is in. Being ugly is in though. And so maybe now beauty pageants are just ironic. Like, to me, they're so grotesque. Like, I love beauty, actually. You know this about me. Like, I love beautiful things and beautiful people. And this is not beautiful to me. It is grotesque. Yeah, it's not pretty. I'm not attracted to it. But that's our opinion. And so it's like, if someone is attracted to it, there are definitely red flags in the beauty pageant industry that like you should watch because if you're just like joining a pageant and you don't know anything about the industry, you're going to be very easily influenced. So don't give people your money without thinking twice. I would say child pageants

are a get the fuck out. Yes, I 100% agree. But I feel like we should do a whole episode. Yeah, I mean, that is like a totally different discussion. Not totally different. That is a somewhat different discussion because now you're dealing with impressionably young minds and, you know, like the safety of little girls. Jean-Benet Ramsey. Hello. But yeah, I would say for grownups, a hard, hardcore watch your back. If you're going to participate in the cold of beauty pageants, you've got to like examine your politics a little bit, try to square that for yourself, maybe a little bit. And also, I think the funny thing is now that we're touching on child beauty pageants, spoiler alert, being a get the fuck out, it's like what came first, the chicken or the

egg. It's like almost adult beauty pageants can't exist without child. Yeah, because there's a whole pipeline. Yeah, bro. Yeah, watch your back. But I hate it. Watch your back. Watch your back. But if you're a kid, don't do it, which means that they should go extinct in like five to 15 years. Yeah, just in terms of math. But we don't do math on this podcast. We don't even bear taxes. I'm just kidding. That was a joke. We are both so stressed about our taxes. Well, that is our show. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back with a new cult next week. But in the meantime, stay culty, but not too culty sounds like a cult was created, hosted and produced by Issa Medina and Amanda Montell. Our theme music is by Casey Colt.

This episode was edited and mixed by Jordan, more of the pod cabin to join our cult follows on Instagram at sounds like a cult pod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell and feel free to check out my books, cultish, the language of fanaticism and word slut, a feminist guide to taking back the English language. And I'm on Instagram at Issa Medina, ISAA, M-N-D-I-N-A, where you can find tickets to my live standup comedy shows or tell me where to perform. We also have a patreon and we would appreciate your support there at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult. And if you'd like our show, feel free to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And if you don't like our show, rate other podcasts the way you rate us.