Mary Aaron

Beauty pageants since the 1960s have been accused of casting women in the form of formal and outward beauty standards without looking at the woman's mind, entity, and scientific progress. But for the first time that base was broken in Connecticut when Camille Schreier, 24, was crowned Miss USA after a science experiment, without paying attention to nude beach wear and the traditional image of these competitions.

The National Beauty Queen Foundation has ruled out wearing a "bikini" as a condition of the competition, so Camille Schreyer decided to go for the test.

Miss ingenious in science
Camille Schreyer dazzled the jury at all stages of the competition in which fifty girls competed for the Miss USA 2020 title, and her family crowned her to win a scholarship worth fifty thousand dollars, and she is still a doctoral researcher in pharmacy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Shrayer intended to show her scientific abilities during the competition, as talent shows are an essential part of these competitions. Shrayer presented her talent as a chemical through a theatrical show with chemicals that exploded on the platform in different colors while explaining the experiment in a fun way, to break the pattern known about the beauty queens.

Schrayer has deliberately sought to break the dominant patterns of what beauty pageants mean, which she planned in her "Reason Your Medicine" campaign that she will promote during 2020 as part of her duties as Miss USA.

Beauty and intelligence meet
"I hope to send a message that every research scientist interested in science can be a beauty queen, and every beauty queen can be interested in science," Shrayer said during her interview with the jury before winning.

And Shearer has reported media reports that she told the jury - consisting of superstar Kelly Rolland, Caramo Brown star of the series Cuper I, and Lauren Ash star of SuperStore - "Miss America is a character who needs to play an educational role," according to the BBC NBC).

Shrayer said earlier that "the Miss America contest has changed her face" and has become more "progressive" by focusing on the achievements of the contest participants more than on their appearance ", according to USA Today.

Change the stereotype
Miss America seeks to change the societal perception of beauty pageant competitions, and in 2018 the organization canceled the section on the review of female participants in beachwear, and set new arbitration standards based on talent contests and questions.

The judging committees have since directed their efforts to reveal the competitors ’intelligence, their aspiration for the future and their main roles - as beauty pageants - in solving community issues, and during the announcement of the changes, the former winner of the title, Gretchen Carlson, stated," We will no longer judge female candidates based on their external appearance. This is a big change. " But this is not the first precedent of its kind.

Global rejection
Movements to reject beauty pageants began since the sixties of the last century, when several signs similar to women appeared in meat and explain to their bodies the names of organs as meat, in an attempt to reject the method of revealing the woman's body in order to evaluate her beauty.

A march, the first anti-Miss anti-beauty pageant movement, was organized on September 7, 1968 to oppose the Miss America contest, and protest demonstrations were issued by women's liberation organizations and feminists, and one of the demonstrations made headlines when activists and feminists decided to burn women's bras in protest On the beauty pageant but none of those attempts to prevent the contests were resolved.

The calls of the feminist liberation movements disappear and return from time to time. In 2011, in some rallies in Britain, women over 60 carried signs bearing signs saying: We are neither beautiful nor ugly, but we are angry. A consideration for working, researcher, and superior women.

Beauty Queen Revolution
Women participated in attempts to change the stereotype of beauty pageants, including those participating in beauty pageants themselves, not only individually like Camille Schreier but on a collective level. The female contestants of the Miss Peru competition in 2017 starred in a group show, and the contest participants presented statistics of violence against women in each of the provinces that were crowned as head.

Participation tops the platform to talk about the numbers of girls who have been subjected to physical or sexual violence in her city that she represents in the competition, which drew the attention of the global press, to what the women and women can offer and what is beyond physical measurements. Participants are important, but not the numbers of women’s body measurements, but the numbers of women victims of violence.

The cries against the beauty pageants rallied until they reached, after six decades, a portion of their intention, which is to cancel the nude beachwear from the contest content, and the contestants hoping to obtain the title begin to think beyond the measurements, and they have a greater duty to show off their often confusing bodies. Teenagers and girls because of the difficulty in obtaining lean bodies with difficult measurements.