Miss America and scholarships for women

Parent Cafe
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<p>John Oliver analyzes the claim that MA “provides” $45M in scholarships to women each year:</p>

<p><a href=“Watch John Oliver Gut the Miss America Pageant on Last Week Tonight | TIME”>Watch John Oliver Gut the Miss America Pageant on Last Week Tonight | TIME;

<p>The video is worth watching - it’s absolutely hilarious - but it’s long. If you don’t want to spend the time, the bottom line is that Miss America actually awards less by a factor of about 10. The best part is that he put up websites of several organizations who provide scholarships to women, and at least one of them (Society of Women Engineers) has seen a huge increase in donations.</p>

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<p>My daughter was telling us about this video clip over dinner last night. She found it hilarious and she loved that he actually did the math. As a math-oriented person, she has noticed how often basic math errors creep into news announcements.
But the blatant error in thinking by the Miss America organization (how they got to the amount of scholarship money they award) was just staggering. Basically it was blatant lying. </p>

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<p>I’m still trying to figure out in what real-life scenario a woman would walk around in public wearing high-heeled pumps with a swimsuit.</p>

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<p>^^ There isn’t one, of course. Also, usually women in swimsuits are not wearing heavy make-up and styled hair! </p>

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<p>I genuinely appreciate Oliver’s doing the research to find out the real story. It has often occurred to me that Miss America’s scholarship winnings is a mere $50,000, which doesn’t go to far in the college tuition world these days. </p>

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<p>Many of the contestants spend a lot of time and money on pageant circuits qualifying by winning a local pageant that leads to the state contest that leads to Miss America. Some contestants compete at the state level as many years as their age will allow when they win different local pageants. I wonder how much the contests, wardrobe, pageant coaching costs and if most contestants win enough scholarship money to balance the expenses? I know of one Miss America who entered exactly three pageants and won them all, her county pageant, her state, then Miss America - but my understanding is that is very rare.</p>

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<p>Where I live, we take our pageants seriously. (Not me, but you know.) It is a condition of winning one that you will enter the pageant at the next level. So they kind of get sucked into it.</p>

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<p>Once again, what really blows me mind is that truth is revealed on what is basically a comedy show. I have often learned something significant about an important issue on Colbert or the Daily Show. I wonder why such and such wasn’t reported in the mainstream news. </p>

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<p>I agree, NJres, that not infrequently the “fake news” is better than the actual news. In this case, I was impressed that they actually got the pageant’s federal and many of the state tax returns.</p>

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<p>Thanks- a funny video I passed along. I had known the “provided” amount of scholarships, not the able to use amount was touted. Interesting if the actual used dollar amount was ever given. As stated, one can’t attend more than one college at a time. Funny how an amount available was zero used as well.</p>

<p>Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s it was the thing to watch for us- but we grew up and so did society.</p>

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<p>To quote one of my FB friends, Oliver is pioneering “investigative comedy.” What makes this skit unique is its length, clocking in at about 15 minutes. That’s about as long as a 60 Minutes segment. I hope non-comic journalists follow up on this.</p>

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<p>“I’m still trying to figure out in what real-life scenario a woman would walk around in public wearing high-heeled pumps with a swimsuit.”</p>

<p>Perhaps to invoke the thought of a private moment.</p>

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<p>Mainstream news has no dog in that fight. They’re not interested in upsetting a decades-long tradition. In addition, the Miss America pageant in broadcast on one of those mainstream news stations, so they don’t want to rock the boat.</p>

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<p>Aren’t many (perhaps most?) Miss America contestants college graduates when they enter the pageant? Are their winnings (salary?) considered “scholarships?”</p>

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<p>It’s a long road to Miss America. They have to win local and state pageants before competing at the national level. Ages are 17 - 24. But, I don’t think you can start at the high end and get through all of that without aging out.</p>

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<p>The video is brilliant - one of the funniest pieces I’ve seen from him, which covers a lot of ground. I think @LakeWashington is correct that many recent winners are college graduates. Presumably they use their winnings for graduate school. But at least one recent winner hadn’t yet started college: Teresa Scanlan of Nebraska was 17 and a high school graduate in 2011 (is now enrolled at Patrick Henry College). <a href=“Teresa Scanlan - Wikipedia”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_Scanlan&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I’m not a fan of beauty pageants but … to each her own. I do think Miss America has long misrepresented itself as the leading scholarship provider to women, and should be called to account for it. Making scholarships available is not the same thing as providing them. Thanks, Mr. Oliver!</p>

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<p>Talk about “learning something significant about an important issue” - this is terrifying:</p>

<p><a href=“Nuclear Weapons: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - YouTube”>Nuclear Weapons: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) - YouTube;