Getting Rid of Swimsuits Was Just the Beginning

The first night of this year’s Miss America competition in Atlantic City, Nina Davuluri, who held the title in 2014 and now owns a skin care company, took the stage to introduce a brand-new event. Gone was the old-fashioned evening gown segment, in which the Miss State winners would parade down a catwalk in floor-length gowns. Instead, this year’s finalists would swish down a red carpet and give an eight-second pitch for a charity or cause—in floor-length gowns. That way, Davuluri explained, beauty and brains would be on display. “Are you ready?” she asked the audience, who cheered and waved homemade signs in reply. “All right,” she said. “Let’s get glamorous and socially conscious!”

For the past year, the 97-year-old Miss America Organization had been attempting to align itself with contemporary feminism—and recover from its own sex-discrimination scandal. In December, emails leaked showing top MAO executives referring to past Miss Americas as “c--ts,” criticizing their weight, and even wishing one woman dead. The controversy prompted several resignations and the appointment of Gretchen Carlson as chairwoman. Carlson, Miss America 1989, is better known as the former Fox News host who in 2016 won a $20 million sexual-harassment settlement from Roger Ailes. “I had no intention of ever having this position,” Carlson proclaimed on Good Morning America in January. “I plan to make this organization 100 percent about empowering women.”