The United States of America Pageants are not to be confused with the more successful Miss United States, Miss America, or Miss USA pageants (it’s easy to get them confused, as the United States of America Pageants don’t have so much as Wikipedia page).
The Miss USA competition has already had a trans competitor, and as part of the Miss Universe system recently bought by a trans CEO, that inclusion likely won’t be slowing down any time soon.
Meanwhile, the smaller-scale United States of America Pageants have made it staunchly, legally clear that they’ll be excluding trans women for the foreseeable future.
Following a 2019 suit from trans beauty queen and activist Anita Green, a federal court appeals court has officially ruled that this pageant system is allowed to exclude trans women all it wants.
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Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s opinion upheld the transphobic eligibility requirement, citing the First Amendment’s protection against “compelled speech”. Green had originally sued on the grounds that the requirement violated the Oregon Public Accommodations Act, but the judges’ 2-1 ruling shot that objection down.
“The panel noted that it is commonly understood that beauty pageants are generally designed to express the ‘ideal vision of American womanhood.’ The Pageant would not be able to communicate ‘the celebration of biological women’ if it were forced to allow Green to participate,” the order states.
Related: Trans tycoon buys Miss Universe pageant that was once owned by Donald Trump
According to their website, United States of America Pageants differentiates their Teen/Miss/Ms./Mrs. categories by factors like age and marital status. They all have a few qualifications in common: their contestants must be U.S. citizens operating out of the states they represent, can’t have ever posed nude in film or print, and must be “natural born females”.
“I don’t think someone shouldn’t be allowed to compete simply because they are transgender,” Green told NPR.
“I think that that’s very arbitrary. Transgender women are equal to cisgender women. To me, pageantry isn’t just about the way a person looks. To me, it’s about giving people a voice.”
Trans models and pageant contestants have been having to make their own scenes for decades due to the cis-normative rigor of established systems.
When we spoke with trans beauty star Arisce Wanzer earlier this year, she touched on the decline of traditional pageant systems.
“We’ve all seen how beauty contests go: they don’t last!” Wanzer stated. “The American pageant system got replaced with the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show. Then that got canceled, because nobody wants to see a beauty contest. Everybody wants someone they can relate to.”
Related: Kimberly Guilfoyle endorses anti-LGBTQ pageant queen for Congress in weird Cameo-style video
At the rate the current pageants are going, trans folks may not want to get involved whatsoever. Miss America had to be totally overhauled in 2018 after heinous messages between judges and officials were exposed, and Miss USA recently suspended its new National Director after numerous rigging allegations.
Between messy dealings behind the scenes and an ever-declining audience, these traditional pageants may want to accept any competent entries they can get.
As if they’ve historically been so selective of cis women…
