Miss America Ditches Swimsuit Competition, Evening Gown, and Judging Looks
The Miss America Organization has announced sweeping changes to the way it will be doing its annual competition, saying that it is ending the swimsuit portion. Overall, Miss America will no longer be judging contestants based on their physical appearance, as the group stated on Tuesday, June 5.
As such, the annual Miss America contest will not be just a beauty pageant, according to Gretchen Carlson, former Miss America winner from Minnesota and now upcoming chairwoman of the Miss America Organization's Board of Trustees.
"So, we are no longer a pageant," Carlson began, explaining the overhaul in an interview with "Good Morning America" via ABC. "We are a competition. We will no longer judge out candidates on their outward physical appearance ... And that means that we will no longer have a swimsuit competition," she explained.
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The next Miss America Competition will take place in Atlantic City on Sept. 9, and the new policy will immediately take effect right then. Carlson went on to explain that this new direction will helpfully lead to women not being judged by their looks, but by their words and their social impact as well.
The new competition will now be more open to more women, as a result, according to Carlson. "We want to be open, transparent, inclusive to women who may not have felt comfortable participating in our program before," she said.
She also noted that the organization as a whole has heard from "a lot of young women" who would have joined the competition, if not for the part where they had to go out on stage in high heels and a swimsuit.
"So guess what, you don't have to do that anymore," Carlson stated.
The 2018 Miss America competition is now also called Miss America 2.0, as revealed by a post on Twitter by Cara Mund, winner of the last season. "We're changing out of our swimsuits and into a whole new era #byebyebikini #MissAmerica2019," she wrote via the official Miss America Twitter handle, to go with a short clip of a white bikini set disappearing in a puff of smoke to reveal the competition's new logo.
It's not just the swimsuit segment that's going away with the coming of Miss America 2.0. The evening gown portion is on its way out as well, and in its place, contestants will be asked to "expresses their personal style" by wearing clothes that make them feel confident enough to win the title of Miss America.
In place of the swimsuit portion, contestants starting this September will now "take part in a live interactive session with the judges, according to the organization," as quoted by The Daily Wire.
The 2019 Miss America Competition is set for Sunday, Sept. 9, at 9 p.m. EDT on ABC.
