Rosemary McLeod: Saying goodbye to scantily-clad 'trophies'

Gretchen Carlson, Miss America 1989. Photo / Getty Images

I don't own swimming togs. Not only do I not swim, I can't swim, and swimming togs have a lot to do with that.

It's good news to me, then, that from next year Miss America contestants won't have to parade in swimsuits and high heels to prove their bodies are flawless. Swimsuits make many women feel insecure, even beautiful ones.

Good for the new management, headed by former pageant winner Gretchen Carlson. It will ultimately kill the contest, which is all about staring at pretty women with few clothes on, but that's no great loss.

Carlson rose to the dizzy heights of Fox News anchor only to be targeted by its former CEO Roger Ailes and sue him for sexual harassment. Just because she wore swimsuits in public once it didn't mean she was attracted to chubby old men in positions of power, to his apparent surprise. It cost him and the company US$20 million.

Donald Trump also once ran the contest, and we know what he boasts about doing with his small hands. Unsurprising then that leaked emails from past pageants mocked winners for their appearance, intellect, and sex lives, the last of which they were not supposed to have.

You are supposed to believe the fantasy that Miss America is a bastion of virginity, but beauty pageants have always attracted scandals, among them the 1957 Miss USA revealed by her mother-in-law to be married with two children, and aged 18, not 21 as she claimed.

Beauty queens have to embody perfection of form that few women have, but which you can find today in sex robots their makers claim you can even form "relationships" with.

What an odd idea, that all it takes is latex, orifices and computer programming to customise the woman of your dreams, but it echoes what beauty queens have been expected to be, robotically talking about saving the world while being called dumb.

It's a tall order for future Miss Americas to be judged on, "who you are as a person from the inside of your soul", and I don't think this is what people seek in sex robots. More likely it's a constant tape playing saying "You are gorgeous", and, "My you are clever". So who's the dumb one in that transaction?

How they fall. Formula One has decided to end the era of "pit girls", barely clad women traditionally sprayed with champagne by winning drivers. Freud would have had fun with that painfully explicit ritual. And England's Professional Darts Corporation is to stop using "walk-on girls", or women wearing not much, to escort players to the stage.

"The PC brigade, the liberal brigade are out in strength … and it's going to get worse," laments chairman Barry Hearn, who can see no reason why men with a sharp eye and steady hand shouldn't be awarded these symbolic trophies.

As for swimming togs, which I always hated wearing, Muslim women are pressuring the Porirua City Council to let them have two hours a week at the public pool, with only female staff, so they can get into the water. According to their custom men other than their husbands must not see their bodies, which makes swimming impossible for them during normal hours.

You'd think this was a reasonable request, especially as the women are most likely not alone in wishing for modesty, but it's drawing feverish opposition from men who claim this is Islamic infiltration and must be resisted.

They have a right to stare at women in swimming gear is what they mean, regardless of how the women feel about it. A quaint idea, but oddly enough, not true.