My article on the Miss America pageant ran at Culture11.com today. Highlights? Quoting my own 2002 USA Today column on the competition, in which I noted that it had become a search for “the nation’s most inoffensive woman.” Either be truly about empowering women and find us the Nobel Prize winners, CEOs and senators of the next generation, or get off your high horse and just show us a bunch of gorgeous (full-stop) girls.
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Laura Vanderkam is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (Portfolio, 2010) and Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues (McGraw-Hill, 2007). She is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors, and her work has appeared in Reader's Digest, Scientific American, Wired, The American, Portfolio and other publications.
Write to her at lvanderkam at yahoo dot com.