BARBARA'S

Every year for the past 97 years the “Miss America” pageant has showcased beautiful young women 17-25 years of age from every state in the United States. From the beginning the pageant was billed as a “bathing beauty revue,” and an integral part of the judging process was how these young women looked in a bathing suit and in an evening gown.

In this year’s pageant, the contestants will not appear in a bathing suit or an evening gown. Gretchen Carlson, a former Miss America and current chairwoman of the Miss America Organization, made the announcement last week. Contestants will no longer be judged based on their physical appearance but on their achievements and goals and on how they will use their talents. It will no longer be a “pageant” but a “competition,” and it will be more open to women of all shapes and sizes. If you do a Google search for “Miss America” today the official site comes up as “Miss America 2.0, 2019: Coming soon: new website, new show, new experience.”

As this news broke, fourteen students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in the United States were just beginning a Doctor of Ministry program in “Ministry to the Emerging Generations.” Walt Mueller, one of the mentors in the program, had asked the students to choose one “cultural artifact” that raises issues related to faith and culture. Amazingly, even before Carlson’s announcement, one of the groups had chosen bikinis as one such artifact!

Mueller’s Doctor of Ministry students will be discussing questions like these:

• What should we think about bathing suit culture?
• How does bathing suit culture shape how we think?

Let’s add some questions of our own for our young women and men:

1. What does the bathing suit culture tell you will attract boys and men? Physical appearance — size and shape? I once heard a mother say to her young teenage daughter, “Quick! Put on your bikini and go down to the beach. There are two cute guys down there.”
2. What does the bathing suit culture tell you about what boys want? Your body, to use — or abuse — to fulfill their desires? Think #MeToo and Fifty Shades of Grey.
3. Does your intelligence, or your character, or your walk with the Lord matter at all?
4. How much has the bathing suit culture contributed to the viewing of girls and women as sex objects, to sexting, to date rape, to sexual harassment in general?

The bathing suit issue in the Miss America pageant has to do with judging a woman on her physical appearance, particularly on how she looks in a bathing suit or an evening gown. We know that this is not the way the Lord judges us. “The Lord sees not as man sees; man looks on the outward appearance but the Lord looks on the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7).

To be continued …