Beauty pageants are no longer an overt part of the casting process, but
Hollywood still has a troubling relationship with ‘beautiful people’
As well as commemorating the feminist disruption of Miss World 1970, the new movie Misbehaviour does a great job of highlighting the sexism of that era – a time when Bob Hope’s jokes were considered funny, women demanding equal pay even funnier, and Miss World’s standards of “beauty” were strictly policed. Those standards loosened enough to let a woman of colour win that year but, still, it is easy to see what the
protesters were rebelling against. Harder to assess is how far we’ve come.
Well beyond the 1970s, the movie industry didn’t have a problem with beauty pageants. It often treated them as an extension of the casting process – for women, at least. Some made it to the top: Sophia Loren, Cybill Shepherd, Sharon Stone, Eva Longoria, not to mention Wonder Woman herself, Gal Gadot (Miss Israel, 2004), and her predecessor Lynda Carter (Miss World
USA, 1972). But many more winners were fed from one dodgy, male-run institution into another, only to be installed in “eye candy” roles.