Miss America 2016 - Betty Cantrell
Miss America 2016 - Betty Cantrell
Miss Georgia Is Miss America 2016 ©2015 ABC

Miss America 2016: My Thoughts & Answers

Miss America 2016

I watched the Miss America 2016 pageant last night and I have my own take on things (not unusual). I’d like to begin by saying that I dream of a world where women don’t have to starve themselves in order to put on bikinis and strut down runways to stripper music so they can afford college. We are a wealthy nation and more than have the means to send EVERYONE to college, even those among us who don’t look as fetching in our swimsuits as the 15 young ladies pictured below.

In the name of gender and income equality, I pray that one day all beauty pageants will be rendered irrelevant by wiser choices our nation makes in the future. Until then, yes, I will watch Miss America but only because there usually isn’t anything better to watch. Perhaps, a more educated populace will demand higher-quality television programming?

Then again, I’ve been in school for probably 30-35 of my 39 years on this planet and I still watch shows like The Bachelor and its various spin-offs and Big Brother so there isn’t likely to be a TED talk on every time you turn on your TV anytime soon.

For sh*ts and giggles, I’m going to rejudge the pageant giving a much larger percentage of the total score to the interview question at the end so none of these women will be able to get by based solely on their looks. I’m also going to type out the actual answers to the interview questions the top 7 gave and then answer them myself.

It’s unfair since I know the questions ahead of time and I have more than 20 seconds to form a response but I’ll give myself the restriction that I must answer the questions in 280 characters or less – double the length of a standard Tweet.

Before I get to all that though, here are the 15 finalists and where they placed in the ACTUAL Miss America 2016 competition:

Alabama_Meg_McGuffin
Miss Alabama – 4th Runner Up

Arkansas_Loren_McDaniel
Miss Arkansas – Top 15

Colorado_Kelley_Johnson
Miss Colorado – 2nd Runner Up

Florida_Mary_Katherine_Fechtel
Miss Florida – Top 10

Georgia_Betty_Cantrell
Miss Georgia –  Winner

Iowa_Taylor_Wiebers
Miss Iowa – Top 12

Louisiana_April_Nelson
Miss Louisiana – 3rd Runner Up

Mississippi_Hannah_Roberts
Miss Mississippi – 1st Runner Up

Nebraska_Alyssa_Howell
Miss Nebraska – Top 12

Oklahoma_Georgia_Frazier
Miss Oklahoma – Top 10

South-Carolina-Daja_Dial
Miss South Carolina – Top 7

Tennessee_Hannah_Robison
Miss Tennessee – Top 7

Texas_Shannon_Sanderford
Miss Texas – Top 10

Virginia_Savannah_Lane
Miss Virginia – Top 15

West_Virginia_Chelsea_Malone
Miss West Virginia – Top 15

So Miss Georgia, Betty Cantrell, is the new Miss America 2016.

Here are some thoughts on the opening before I hand down MY judgments:

  • Vanessa Williams got an apology for being forced to give up her title in 1984 after a photographer sold nude photos of her to Penthouse. Vanessa was told she would be in silhouette and unrecognizable. Yeah, never fall for that line, ladies. Also, she was the first black Miss America. I was not aware of that. Interesting since usually Miss Americas disappear off the face of the Earth after their reigns are up.
  • Miss Oklahoma intimated in the beginning of the show that her state was the land of the earthquakes. First, step off, honey. California is the land of the earthquakes, you know where ACTUAL natural seismic activity is taking place. Second, way to take pride in destroying the environment, Oklahoma, by advertising your newfound natural disaster due to overzealous fracking.
  • Miss Iowa took pride in her state’s life-size butter sculptures of cows. Yeah! ‘Murica! This one’s for Anthony: “BUUUTT-AAA!!!”

Okay, on to the judgments. Everyone starts with a blank scorecard because I have no idea what the contestants’ preliminary scores were.

First up, the bikini competition. The preliminary score is worth 25% so I’m going to deduct that and add 25% to the interview question because a woman’s scholarship worthiness shouldn’t be based on how hot she is or how refined her tastes in evening wear are.

Here’s MY breakdown:

  • Swimsuit – 10%
  • Evening Gown – 20%
  • Talent – 30%
  • Interview Question – 40%

MY Swimsuit Scores

  1. Miss Tennessee: 10
  2. Miss Iowa: 7
  3. Miss West Virginia: 8
  4. Miss South Carolina: 8
  5. Miss Florida: 9
  6. Miss Oklahoma: 10
  7. Miss Virginia: 7
  8. Miss Alabama: 8
  9. Miss Colorado: 9 (awesome bikini)
  10. Miss Louisiana: 9
  11. Miss Texas: 9
  12. Miss Nebraska: 9
  13. Miss Georgia: 10
  14. Miss Mississippi: 9
  15. Miss Arkansas: 7

Now that that ugly bit of business is out of the way, looks like Miss Arkansas, Miss Iowa, and Miss Virginia are being cut from the first round in MY Miss America. BUT Iowa survived in the real pageant so she continues on and Miss West Virginia goes home instead.

MY Evening Wear Scores

  1. Miss Florida: 9 (white gown – not crazy about the color but the cut is great)
  2. Miss Colorado: 7 (average red gown)
  3. Miss Iowa: 9 (gorgeous blue gown)
  4. Miss Mississippi: 8 (slightly matronly gown with beaded top and white skirt)
  5. Miss Texas: 9 (attractive white gown with beading at waist sides)
  6. Miss Tennessee: 6 (below average red gown)
  7. Miss South Carolina: 9 (White lace over rose tulle)
  8. Miss Alabama: 8 (nice but top looks like it’s been cut with scissors???)
  9. Miss Nebraska: 6 (ill-fitting turquoise satin gown)
  10. Miss Louisiana: 9 (sexy simple red gown)
  11. Miss Georgia: 7 (white gown with bare midriff??)
  12. Miss Oklahoma: 9 (gorgeous princess dress with beaded top and full white skirt)

Honestly, none of the dresses were the height of fashion but I really don’t give a damn about the evening wear competition. I couldn’t care less how fashion-savvy these women are.

After my evening gown comp, the two going home based on their combined scores from swimwear and evening wear would have been Miss Tennessee and Miss Nebraska but Miss Iowa went home instead of Miss Tennessee in the actual competition. That’s probably because swimwear was 15% in the actual competition and Miss Tennessee is a total smoke show.

MY Talent Scores

  1. Miss Florida: 6 (ballet/tumbling routine to Bridge Over Troubled Water)
  2. Miss Oklahoma: 7 (song: Happy Days Are Here Again)
  3. Miss Louisiana: 9 (song: Climb Every Mountain)
  4. Miss Tennessee: 9 (piano: Liberace’s El Cumbanchero)
  5. Miss Texas: 6 (song: Son of a Preacher Man)
  6. Miss Alabama: 7 (ballet routine to Clubbed to Death from The Matrix)
  7. Miss Colorado: 5 (Monologue about one of her Alzheimer’s patients who made her realize all patients are people and she’s more than just a nurse. Telling anecdotes is not a talent… unless they’re REALLY clever. That one wasn’t.)
  8. Miss South Carolina: 7 (song: Believe)
  9. Miss Mississippi: 6 (violin: Zapateo op. 23 #2)
  10. Miss Georgia: 10 (operatic vocal: Tu? Tu? Piccolo Iddio)

Here’s Miss Georgia’s operatic vocal:

 

I think it’s safe to say Miss Georgia won the talent portion of the competition. Holy crap.

So at this stage of MY Miss America Pageant, Miss Colorado, Miss Mississippi, and Miss Florida would have been out but who actually left was Miss Texas, Miss Oklahoma, and Miss Florida. Miss Texas was 4th to be cut by my scoring but Miss Oklahoma was my third place finisher after the talent round so the Miss America judges suck. But Miss Georgia is only .4 points off the leader up to this point even by my scoring.

But not so fast, Miss Cantrell. Here comes the real test of your pageant mettle in MY Miss America competition: the interview questions. I’m going to cut these girls some slack though since they only had 20 seconds to answer (barely enough time to process the question), they were the most nervous they’d ever been in their lives, and they may not have even been aware of whatever a judge decided to ask them about and never given the subject much thought prior to being asked.

Their answers will be followed by mine along with a character count of my responses which must be 280 or less.

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2 thoughts on “Miss America 2016: My Thoughts & Answers

  1. First, great shout out to Buuttt-taaa! The Miss Georgia opera was amazing – the interview question answer, not so much. Of your interview answers, my favorites were 1 and 7, but all of them beat the contestants answers. So, I vote you as Miss America!

    • I thought you would like the shout out. Yeah, I was pretty floored by Miss Georgia’s performance as well. I’ve never seen a pageant contestant who was actually REALLY talented. Everyone else was just okay.

      My favorite answers were 1 and 7 too! Mostly because the questions were thought-provoking so it was fun to answer them. The rest of the questions were pretty run-of-the-mill and easy to answer. My stances were nothing anyone hasn’t heard from a liberal-leaning type before. But you know how I like to be long-winded. Working within the 280 characters was the real challenge.

      Awwww! Thanks, babe, for voting me as Miss America. I’ve probably got about 100 years at the gym to look as good as those women did in their bikinis and by then I’ll be dead or a REALLY rotten-fruit-face.

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