Tiaras, tans and trauma: How reality TV - and real life - turned into a beauty pageantA woman in a glittering pink evening gown saunters onto a platform. She looks impeccable: Her lashes are long, and her heels are high. Her shiny brown hair is pulled back into a demure updo. Her confidence is on display in her walk, and when she's announced as the winner, joy overtakes her face, erupting into a dazzling white smile.
Amaya "Papaya" Espinal, a 25-year-old nurse from the Bronx, just won Love Island USA Season 7. She's not a pageant queen, but she might as well be.
Love Island USA winners Amaya Espinal and Bryan Arenales. (Ben Symons/Peacock)Beauty pageants are more symbolic than actually watched these days. Their viewership has declined since their height of popularity in the 1960s. The 2024 Miss America pageant, which was not televised and only available on streaming, was slammed by viewers for appearing "low budget," and Miss USA 2024 viewership numbers on the CW dropped 28% from the previous year. Still, the iconography of a gorgeous woman competing with others for a tiara and sash remains influential. We all know a beauty queen when we see one. Pageantry has just taken on a new form.
AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWomen prepare all year and all their lives to go on shows like Love Island now. They have demanding fitness routines, constant hair and skin maintenance, not to mention all the sprays, needles and lasers necessary to look perfectly smooth on camera. It's like taking on a second job to spend an uncertain amount of time in the spotlight."Though pageant culture is declining ... reality TV has supplanted [pageants] as an opportunity to be seen and compete, and for our culture to see beautiful young women in swimsuits," director Penny Lane, whose four-part docuseries Mrs. America premiered at Tribeca Festival in June, tells Yahoo.
Nicole La Ha Zwiercan, who won Mrs. America in 2022. (Courtesy of the 2025 docuseries Mrs. America)Lane and her documentary team followed contestants competing to win the crown at the pageant for married women 18 and older, which the film is named after. She was drawn to Mrs. America in particular because it felt "rebellious" compared to most other pageants, which exclude women who aren't young and unmarried. For example, Miss America, the country's most popular pageant, requires contestants to be single, childless and under the age of 28."If you think of it this way, that means older married women are not interesting to the beauty pageant world ... only those who are sexually available," Lane says. "If you're a woman, you're expected to spend your entire life killing yourself to look hot ... it's considered by many to be a virtue - the effort to present a beautiful exterior to the world."AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementPhysical attractiveness is only half of your score in a pageant. The other half comes from how well women are able to package their life stories into quick interviews with judges and answer an off-the-cuff question onstage."You have to quickly mine your deepest trauma - not always, but generally - then package it up to have a happy ending and a call to action to demonstrate that this thing you went through was worth it because it's now who you are," Lane says. You have to do that to get a good arc on reality TV, as well - and in modern life.'Contestant energy'Former pageant contestants say the demands of pageantry aren't necessarily bad. They teach self-confidence and poise.
Laura J. Kaminer has been in the pageantry circuit for 33 years, 10 of which she spent actively competing. In 2003, she won Mrs. South Carolina United States. She's now a pageant emcee, and her husband judges them."My parents were interested in grooming me for life by teaching me etiquette, poise and instilling self-confidence. I took modeling classes, which taught us things like how to walk, interview skills, basic manners and more," she says. "Pageants were sort of like the 'recitals' of modeling and manners class."AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementKaminer sees the "DNA of pageantry" all over pop culture, from the "contestant energy" people have on reality TV to the way people brand themselves on social media."The ability to have a stage presence, work a room and communicate publicly are all skills seen in traditional pageantry," she says. "Shows like The Bachelor and other reality series have a pageant-like structure: Appearance, interviews, elimination rounds and even crowns. Pageantry has simply been rebranded.
Even as elements of pageantry are put more obviously on display in reality TV, the competitions themselves are evolving too. Megan Celestini, who won Ms. Woman Florida United States in 2017, tells Yahoo that pageantry is not just about how you walk and talk on stage anymore."Organizations, and even the judges in your interviews, are looking for you to translate your story into something compelling, visual and authentic that res