The Miss America Pageant taught us to ogle women’s bodies. Can it now teach us to value their ideas?

In 1921, the Miss America Pageant debuted, with a previously taboo activity at its core — ogling women in their bathing suits. Over the past century, the pageant has helped normalize this activity. But this week the event’s new, mostly female leadership announced plans to scrap the swimsuit and evening-gown competitions. Can the organization that helped turn the sexual objectification of women into a national pastime help us end the practice?

Not really. Beauty pageants reinforce the gendered power dynamics in our culture — women are disproportionately judged by appearance — so unless the pageant turns into an essay contest (or radio show), banning swimsuits won’t alter this fundamental premise.

Beauty pageants were not new in 1921, the year that the Atlantic City Hotelman’s Association inaugurated a “Fall Frolic” in the hope of extending the tourist season past Labor Day. In fact, Rehoboth Beach, Del., sponsored a Miss United States Pageant in 1880, but organizers decided it was not profitable enough to continue. For one thing, it was hard to persuade women to participate. For another, middle-class tourists deemed such entertainment too seedy.

Surprisingly, Miss America Pageant organizers — consciously or otherwise — drew their images of what a women’s pageant should look like not from previous beauty contests but from suffrage pageants. Throughout the 1910s, women’s rights activists staged elaborate pageants depicting powerful women throughout history and highlighting the various traits and careers women could aspire to, by having participants wear white sashes emblazoned with words such as “Writer” and “Courage.” Suffrage pageants helped popularize the presence of women in the public sphere and made women more comfortable thinking of themselves as agents of change.

In a strange twist, the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 also made beauty pageants appealing to mainstream audiences. On the same day that the New York Times reported “150,000 See Picked Beauties in One-Piece Suits in Atlantic City’s Fall Event,” another headline declared “Uncorseted [Woman] is Man’s Equal.” As women embraced new opportunities as citizens, elected officials and self-supporting individuals, the Miss America Pageant’s retrograde version of femininity soothed Americans discomfited by the seismic changes taking place. ...