It’s 2023. How can we still have a competition where women are judged mainly based on their appearances? Every year, millions of people turn on their TVs to watch the Miss Universe beauty pageant. Millions of people support valuing women based on their bodies and appearances.

Although the viewership has been quickly falling in the past five years, it’s not falling fast enough. However, we are moving in the right direction. Last year’s Miss Universe show which took place in Israel and aired on Fox had the smallest audience of any Miss Universe pageant ever. It drew in over 1 million fewer viewers than in previous years, going from 4.19 million in 2018 to 2.7 in 2022.

Despite the fact that we are moving in the right direction, it is unbelievable that this extremely outdated form of entertainment has so much support. A competition that revolves around judging women based on physical appearance, including the swimwear category, is completely antiquated.

On top of this, there are countless entry restrictions that percent mothers, wives and divorced women from entering the competition. Luckily, as of this year, the Miss Universe Organization has updated this 70-year-old rule and allowed married women and mothers to compete in the pageant.

It is ridiculous that it took over 70 years for the Miss Universe organization to accept the fact that a woman could juggle being a devoted wife or mother while maintaining an important leadership position.

Public competitions like this influence millions of people and set a precedent for how women should be viewed and treated. The Miss Universe pageant preaches that women should be judged based solely on their looks. Not to mention the extremely negative effect that they an have on women’s relationships with their bodies. Many young impressionable girls who tuned into the Miss Universe competition could have come out hating their bodies.

Competitions like this cause women to compare themselves to the contestants that they see on screen. In the case of Miss Universe, many perfectly healthy women are forced to compare themselves too skinny, beautiful women who do not reflect the female population. This can lead to countless problems including eating disorders and body dysmorphia.

There is no room in today’s society for a performance that displays women showing off their looks to a row of judges until one is crowned the winner.