Miss USA may tout itself as a scholarship program for promising young women, but let's be real: the real goal is to showcase hot young thangs in glittering gowns and barely-there bikinis paired with beach-impractical stilettos.
Usually, said contestants fit the American ideal for "smokin' hot," which is to say: they're skinny. Like, really really skinny. So when Miss Indiana Mekayla Diehl strutted down the runway, the Twittersphere erupted into cheers over her "normal" and "thick" body. (We understand that within the twisted sphere of beauty pageants a size 4 is positively rubenesque, but for the rest of the world to drink the Kool-aid that this is some sort of body image advancement is just plain sad.)
To be clear, that "normal" and "thick" body is 5'8" and size 4, and looks like this:
Which raises the question: If that's "thick," what's "thin"? For that matter, what's "fat"—a hefty (gasp!) size 6?
As someone who's 5'8" and size 12, reading something like this sends a very clear, very strong message: Holy shit you're fat. And I know I'm not alone. The average woman is a size 14, which means the majority of ladies who read this story will get the memo that they're three times the size of a "normal" person.
For that matter, it seems high time we challenged the very notion that a "normal" body for a woman even exists. Female bodies come in vastly different sizes and shapes—pear, hourglass, diamond, spoon, etc. etc.—all carrying weight in completely different ways. That's why some ladies look healthy and amazing at a size 2, while others look healthy and amazing at a size 14. Women also burn fat differently based on everything from genes to race.
Hence, the idea that there's one "normal" body size/type makes virtually no sense. And yet the ideal persists, forcing many women to aspire toward something that is physically impossible for them.
Setting aside the fact that the stunning Miss Indiana is far from "hefty," she is also far from "normal." No woman is. And that's OK.
Images: Facebook
