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    Solutions for Flat-Chested Beauty Queens

    Posted Friday, May 01, 2009 3:55 PM | By Kerry Howley
    This transcript of an interview with Keith Lewis, the co-director of the Miss California Pageant, must be among the strangest artifacts ever produced by the creepily enthusiastic industry that is the American pageant circuit. (Miss California, you'll recall, is the contestant who believes "the way she was raised" to be sufficient justification for her policy preferences.) In the course of explaining that yes, his organization did pay for Carrie Prejean's boob job, Lewis argues that the organization did not "encourage" her to surgically restructure her chest area (but did bankroll it!), that the procedure was paid for simply so Miss California would have a positive self-image (though "of course" size matters in the competition), and that he totally agrees it's time to "look at the way we perceive real women." From an appearance with Maggie Rodriguez of the The Early Show:
    LEWIS: ... it's a personal choice. Well, I think that it's about how a woman feels about herself. In terms of, for me, it's not a personal choice that I would recommend. But at the same time, I know so many women that have done the procedure and feel better about themselves and the way they present themselves.

    And I think that's the question is, whether or not, when you're looking at that procedure as an option, am I going to feel better about myself? It's not about one night. It isn't about one night of competition. And doing a procedure like that for one night of competition would be foolish...
    RODRIGUEZ: ... if you have a flat chest, what are you supposed to do?

    LEWIS: You use chicken cutlets. You use tape. You use anything that you can to enhance the line. There's lots of tricks of the trade. It's just a matter of whether or not you want to go to that next level.

    RODRIGUEZ: I wonder if you should change the rules and maybe not judge it so much on proportion.
    I find both sides of this exchange deeply bizarre, perhaps because I lack the imaginative capacity to envision a swimsuit competition not premised on a certain conception of the female body. What are they going evaluate? Perkiness? Gait? The actual swimsuit?

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