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Why Miss Tennessee Competes
00:06:46
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| Anyway, I explore a lot of these, every issue that I can think of, and through various, well, basically family contacts, we learned that Miss Tennessee, specifically Miss Tennessee Volunteer, I'll explain that in a moment, was in town, and I thought, you know, why not have her on the show? | |
| There are a lot of questions that I have, and sure enough, she's here. | |
| Her parents are with her. | |
| She's Amelia Collins, and you could obviously look her up, and I'm sure many of you will. | |
| Most logical instinct. | |
| And welcome to the show, Amelia. | |
| Thank you so much for having me. | |
| So, first of all, explain the difference between Miss America and Miss Volunteer America. | |
| So Miss Volunteer America is similar to Miss America before the changes, before it became Miss America 2.0, in the sense that we have a swimsuit still, we have evening gown, we have talent, and interview. | |
| And I think our scoring is also a little bit different in the sense that interview actually accounts for the majority of our score. | |
| Really? | |
| Yeah, 40% of our score. | |
| Oh. | |
| That's a lot. | |
| How does it break down the other percentages? | |
| They're all even. | |
| They're 20% each. | |
| So, talent, interview, swimsuit, gown. | |
| Yes, and then we also have an onstage question for final night. | |
| I know. | |
| Well, those questions have always been problematic to me. | |
| It's somewhat like, would you like to see the world peaceful? | |
| But you don't know what's coming, right? | |
| You don't know what the thing is. | |
| You have no idea. | |
| You actually picked the question out of a fishbowl. | |
| Oh, is that right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| So what was your question? | |
| So my question started out by saying your generation is often considered entitled, but what's one word that you would use to describe your generation? | |
| Oh, that's a toughie as an immediate response. | |
| So what did you say? | |
| I chose to say the word educated, and I explained that I feel like my generation has access to a lot of resources, and we can use that in whatever way, but we definitely need to take advantage of having social media and that sort of thing. | |
| So wait, the question was, a lot of people would describe your generation, what was the term, as what? | |
| As entitled. | |
| Oh, as entitled. | |
| Oh, yes. | |
| Now, so of course, we're all thinking, what would we answer? | |
| So this is why, among other reasons, because swimsuit would not do well with me, but in all seriousness, if I were in a competition like that, as soon as you asked it, my mind raced and I came up with indoctrinated. | |
| That's really what I think this generation has been indoctrinated. | |
| But anyway, you don't have to react to that. | |
| I'm just thinking what I might have said. | |
| So educated is certainly accurate. | |
| So this is an alternative to the Miss America contest. | |
| Now, so let me get to a question that, you know, sort of the elephant in the room. | |
| I want you to know, there's no way you would know this. | |
| Though I have not seen a Miss America contest since I lived in my parents' house when I was in college, which was some time ago, my parents watched the Miss America contest every year. | |
| And there was always a swimsuit competition. | |
| My parents, in my case, were religious Jews. | |
| I know you come from a religious Christian home. | |
| And it wouldn't even occur to them that there was anything wrong with it. | |
| In fact, my father would discuss with my mother why he liked Miss Utah or whatever it might be. | |
| And then she'd say, oh, no, no, no. | |
| Are you kidding? | |
| Did you see Miss Michigan? | |
| And it was great. | |
| It was so wholesome, so to speak. | |
| And they're out there, obviously, in their bathing suits. | |
| I completely objected to Miss America contest forcing the women. | |
| People for women's choice said you have no choice. | |
| There is no swimsuit competition. | |
| So your Miss America or Miss Volunteer America competition has kept it in. | |
| Yes. | |
| So you come from a religious Christian home, correct? | |
| Yes. | |
| Are you still Christian? | |
| Yes. | |
| Unfortunately, not every kid who... | |
| Raising a Christian home stays Christian, as we well know. | |
| Okay, so how do you, if you indeed need to, reconcile the swimsuit competition and your religiosity? | |
| I honestly don't think it affects me that much. | |
| I look at the swimsuit as something that's so empowering, and it also gives me a chance to make sure that I'm still staying healthy mentally and physically. | |
| And so I don't really think it affects... | |
| My relationship with God or my religion in any sort of way. | |
| Right. | |
| Are there other religious women in the competition? | |
| Yes. | |
| Mine and Miss Tennessee Volunteer, the majority of them were Christian. | |
| Right. | |
| Look, as I said, I defend it. | |
| There's a sexual element. | |
| I think it's silly to deny it, obviously. | |
| Beautiful women in swimsuits has a sexual connotation. | |
| I don't think that's an issue. | |
| It's funny, as I've pointed out, you might find this of interest. | |
| When America was much more religious, they were completely accepting of the swimsuit competition. | |
| Secular America doesn't like the swimsuit competition. | |
| That's the irony. | |
| Yeah, that is. | |
| I think a lot of people assume that it objectifies women, but I think they forget that we have the choice to compete in that, and we are making the choice to do swimsuit, and it's actually something that a lot of us look forward to. | |
| I mean, that was one of my favorite aspects of the competition. | |
| It's also super glamorous, and it's really fun to strut across the stage in a swimsuit. | |
| Good. | |
| I'm glad you said it. | |
| That's exactly right. | |
| Why shouldn't it be? | |
| There's something, everything is upside down in the world in which we live. | |
| Your reaction is perfectly legit. | |
| I'd like people to call in if you think, if you're listening and you think that it objectifies women, by the way, which to a certain extent it does. | |
|
New Major: Bio-Math
00:01:57
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| Who isn't objectified? | |
| I mean, Aishi, you know what? | |
| We should do an hour on the whole issue of objectification. | |
| Everybody is objectified in a certain sense. | |
| You objectify your doctor. | |
| Your doctor has one role, to be a doctor. | |
| Everyone is objectified in some way. | |
| And if there's an element of sexual objectification, so what? | |
| Nobody gives the second sentence, and therefore what? | |
| You're not seen as more than that? | |
| That's ridiculous. | |
| Let's talk about the more than that. | |
| You're in math, is that correct? | |
| Yes, I'm a bio-math major. | |
| Okay, there you go. | |
| She's a bio-math major. | |
| It's a new major, actually. | |
| It's fairly new. | |
| Oh yeah, now that you mention it, you're right. | |
| There's a new major every week, basically. | |
| Half the time I ask a college kid, you know, what are you majoring in, I don't understand the subject. | |
| What is Biomath? | |
| So it's a combination of biology and mathematics, but we use a lot of math modeling to describe and explain biological phenomena. | |
| I haven't gotten super into my major courses because I'm coming up on my junior year, but so far I've done a lot of research with epidemics and kind of modeling how that works with certain populations. | |
| But it really covers computer science. | |
| Honestly, any type of science and a lot of math as well. | |
| All right. | |
| We'll be back with Amelia Collins, Miss Tennessee, in the new competition, as it were, out there. | |
| If you have any questions or reactions to anything that I have said, 1-8 Prager, 776-877-243-7776. | |
| You are listening to the Male Female Hour. | |
| This is the second hour of my show every Wednesday. | |