If you’re old enough to remember that the road to minority empowerment started with self-esteem, big Afro hair styles and phrases like “Black is beautiful,” then tell me where we are after Sunday’s Miss America Pageant?
When the dark-skinned South-Asian beauty, Nina Davuluri, was crowned Miss America 2013, did we get to a new place in diversity where we have changed the standards of mainstream beauty in America?
Or did all we do is create a new stereotype of what is acceptable as “beautiful”?
In other words, can you really be beautiful — in that Miss America way — without a westernized sense of beauty?
It’s taken awhile before Miss America reflected the true beauty of America.
Consider that, since the pageant began in 1921, the first Black Miss America came in 1984, when Vanessa Williams and Suzette Charles finished first and second. But Williams’ reign was cut short when photos of her and another woman appeared in Penthouse Magazine. It gave Charles the opportunity to be the second African-American Miss America, all in one year.
Two in one year, even in infamy, is more Miss Americas than there’s been for Hispanic Americans.
