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Her.meneutics is edited by associate editor Katelyn Beaty and online editor Sarah Pulliam Bailey.

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May 26, 2010

A Bikinied Muslim Miss USA

The backlash to Rima Fakih's win suggests mainstream America still wants their national beauties to be Christian.

Mandy McMichael, guest blogger

When I tell people that I study religion and beauty pageants in America, they usually ask, “What do beauty pageants have to do with religion?” “Everything,” I reply. So I was excited to see that another pageant participants' religious beliefs are in the news — if only because it confirms my hypothesis.

This is the second consecutive year the Miss USA pageant prompted a media explosion surrounding the religious beliefs of one of its contestants. The attention given to Carrie Prejean and Rima Fakih prove, perhaps surprisingly, that a number of people still pay attention to beauty pageants in America.

Last year, many speculated that Prejean’s answer to a question about same-sex marriage cost her the crown. Prejean’s answer stemmed from her evangelical beliefs about marriage. Since then, she has talked about her Christianity on talk shows and in an autobiography. Many in the conservative Christian community embraced Prejean as one of their own, believing that she did not win because she stood up for her religious beliefs. Others questioned her youthful indiscretions. Fewer questioned her participation in the pageant that made her famous.

This year, for the first time, a Muslim was crowned Miss USA. Rima Fakih is a 24-year-old Lebanese American who identifies as both Muslim and Christian. In the days following the pageant, the Internet exploded with commentary about the winner. Fakih’s faith yielded much press among her faith community, as Prejean’s did last year. Some Muslims celebrated Fakih as an example of diversity within Islam. Others applauded her win as proof of wider acceptance of Muslims into American society. Still others criticized her participation as out of keeping with Islamic teaching.

The intriguing commonality between Prejean and Fakih is that their respective faith communities felt compelled to comment. Each woman’s faith came to the fore as media praised, questioned, or criticized her religious affiliation. Moreover, each contestant negotiated her relationship to her religion in the midst of pageant participation and controversy. Fakih felt compelled to explain her participation, finally stating that religion should not be a factor for Miss USA winners. (She was also compelled to explain her pole-dancing lessons at a Michigan nightclub last year.) Christianity, on the other hand, finds itself so intertwined with the world of pageantry that it is no longer controversial for most Americans.

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The desire for a Christian beauty to represent America runs deep. Fakih’s case reminds me of another time in our country’s history when ethnicity and religion were closely linked for a national beauty-contest winner. Bess Myerson, Miss New York, won Miss America in 1945. As the first (and still the only) Jewish Miss America, she faced criticism because of her religion. Indeed, pageant officials urged her to change her last name to something less Jewish so that she would be more widely accepted. Most Jews were thrilled with Myerson’s win, recognizing it as another step toward cultural acceptance. Indeed, while some diversity of opinion may have existed among American Jews, history has not preserved it. Myerson, however, found herself an unwelcome guest in some parts of post-WWII America where anti-Semitism still flourished.

The need for Christians to hold national pageant titles raises questions for me about why Christians care so much. As a Christian, and despite the fact that I’m deeply intrigued by pageants and watch them regularly as a part of my research, somewhere deep inside I believe that I should not care about the nation’s choice for “ideal beauty.” Indeed, something seems awry when Christian ideals of beauty so perfectly match those of the world. The church ought to form alternative ideals of womanhood that are not dependent on what marketers from Victoria’s Secret or Cosmo tell us. Christians should be the ones teaching girls how to be successful, confident people at home in their bodies. We should help them discover and portray the beauty of Christ to the world rather than expecting the world to teach our young women what it means to be beautiful.

Do I think Christians should stop participating in pageants? No. I’m not suggesting that it is sinful. Indeed, my research shows that women gain much from pageant participation. Rather, I’m cautioning Christians to resist laying claim to pageants. And, like the American Muslim community and the American Jewish community before that, I think Christians would do well to recognize that national beauty pageants are not celebrations of religion but of beauty. Rima Fakih, just as Bess Myerson, represents the current ideal of American beauty, not American Christianity.

Mandy E. McMichael is a Ph.D. candidate in religion at Duke University. Her dissertation is on religion and beauty pageants in the South. She wrote about Carrie Prejean and the history of U.S. beauty pageants last year.

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Posted by Katelyn Beaty on May 26, 2010 9:07 AM

Comments

No Christian should participate (contestant, judge or host) or even be watching beauty pageants, these things do not honor God, and go against the Word of God, they are worldly and a disgrace.

How can Rimah Fakih "identifies as both Muslim and Christian", she sound like one very confused person to me.

Posted By: Linda | May 27, 2010 11:58 AM

Instead of Muslim or Christian, I think Rima Fakih is just your typical secular American who has a religion in name only. This makes her an appropriate representative for the United States.

Posted By: Andrew | May 27, 2010 4:55 PM

Ditto, Linda.

Also, for exactly these reasons ("Christians should be the ones teaching girls how to be successful, confident people at home in their bodies. We should help them discover and portray the beauty of Christ to the world rather than expecting the world to teach our young women what it means to be beautiful.") I choose not to watch pageants nor expose my daughter to them.

Posted By: Robyn | May 27, 2010 4:59 PM

When the Miss USA contestants made news by posing suggestively in lingerie, we could have guessed that there is no longer anything "Christian" or even wholesome about this pageant, if there ever was. I don't think that young people even know what modesty and decorum are any more--in the church or out of it!

Posted By: Suzy | May 27, 2010 6:32 PM

I use to watch the pageants all the time for the pretty dresses, faces on the girls, and supposedly what they wanted to do for the world if they won. Now, it's no clothes, a talent contest that is so much more important than their intelligence and college success, a flat stomach, etc. I don't bother any more. How did Donald Trump become the owner, anyway, I thought it was owned by the pageant people putting it on. This could explain the change, pure entertainment as Mr. Trump's world is all about. Certainly no ethics or morals are involved. It seems the media forces the ethics and morals on the pageant owners who "stand behind" the offending contestant except for the young lady answering the homosexual question as she and millions of Americans answer it. The pageant is more about making money now-a-days than about being representative of America. So what else is new. No wonder the rest of the world uses our immorality against us. We hand ourselves over to our enemies.

Posted By: Original Anna | May 27, 2010 9:15 PM

Hmm for the life of me I cannot figure, out of the three, that which is the most absurd: Christianity, Islam, or beauty pageants?

Posted By: Joker | May 28, 2010 8:06 AM

I'm not sure what of value Christian women (or any women, for that matter) obtain from beauty pageants. I've heard some young women say that pageants helped them feel more "confident," but I always wondered if that was simply how they rationalized it or if "confidence" is really something Christians should be striving for in the first place. At the end of the day, beauty pageants seem to be just another way of celebrating the physical over the spiritual and contribute to a culture that makes women feel as though they're lacking if they don't live up to a certain physical standard. Knowing that God made us all and loves each one just the way she is, I can't think that any activity which glorifies some of us and devalues others because of the way we look could be godly.

Posted By: TheLordIsMyShepherd | May 30, 2010 12:34 AM

I doubt that there is anything "spiritual" about so called "beauty" pageants, but I am quite sure there is nothing Christian about them.

Christianity promotes modesty of dress and is certainly not in favour of semi-nudity. It exhalts inner beauty - beauty of spirit, and not of body. I challenge any Christian to point to any statement (passage or verse)in the bible, and in context, which supports a woman publicly displaying three fourths of her body before a mixed audience (and particularly for the sheer pleasure of the audience).

While involvement in a "beauty" contest may assist with self-confidence and "character building", It most certainly will emphasize and reinforce many disturbing myths about beauty, and will most assuredly make other questionable areas where fame and fortunes are made via exposure of the body accessible and acceptable.

Maybe all these beauties who can do nothing but cry when they are announced as the pageant winner are Christian (and moslem) young women who somehow sense that they are not being obedient to their Christian faith.

Posted By: Steve Skeete | May 31, 2010 2:06 PM

This interview on Patheos would suggest that Rima Fakih does not identify herself as both Christian and Muslim, nor that she is hesitant to identify herself as Muslim.
http://www.patheos.com/Resources/Additional-Resources/Amazing-Melting-Pot-of-Religions-and-Faiths

It only suggests that she has a very mature and accepting attitude about her faith and the faith of others. Hard not to be impressed with her, at least a little, after reading this?

Posted By: Jeff Smith | May 31, 2010 4:39 PM

Labeling her self as both Muslim and Christian is about as politically correct as it gets. There's no way to be both. I get the sneaky feeling she may not be either. But I understand. At this level of competition you have to walk a thin line.

Posted By: Toni | July 30, 2010 7:10 AM

No way to be both Muslim and Christian.

Posted By: Toni | July 30, 2010 7:16 AM

The only modeling that Christians should do is to model CHRIST.When a Christian models, she plants seeds that do not bring glory to GOD but to satan. seeds of anorexia, seeds of bulimia, seeds of breast enlargement/reduction, seeds of i am not beautiful, seeds of i wish i was like her, seeds of vanity. Because the other women want to look like her. The BIBLE says woe unto the person who causes others to sin.Christians are only called to Boast of CHRIST and of their weaknesses. If the pageant was to showcase their weakness,how rude they can be,how moody they can be and how CHRIST has been able to use them despite of all these, then we can call this Christian modelling.

Posted By: waithera | October 3, 2010 11:39 PM

Can't say that I agree with you Waithera. Beauty is a gift just like writing or singing...and true it can be used for evil but that doesn't mean that everyone who stands infront of a camera is honoring satan. We should remember not to be so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good.

Posted By: Steven | November 1, 2010 9:40 AM

Angry Birds RIO

Posted By: LongoxMouff | November 28, 2011 11:56 AM

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