On Sunday evening, Rima Fakih was crowned Miss USA 2010. By morning, her reign had already been tarnished by the requisite beauty queen sex scandal. Photos had surfaced of the now-24-year-old Fakih dancing on a stripper pole in a local radio event titled "Stripper 101." But as Broadsheet's Tracy Clark-Flory notes, Fakih's "official Miss USA glamor shots" (above) are actually significantly more risque than the "stripper" shots, which revealed Fikah—clothed—in short-shorts and a tank top.

Well, well, well. What on earth could possibly be happening here?

First, Clark-Flory lays out the sexual landscape:

What's absurd—no, make that what's most absurd—about this faux scandal is that the photos of Fakih pole-dancing are far tamer than the official Miss USA glamor shots. As Mary Elizabeth Williams wrote last week, it seemed pageant officials were "heading scandal off at the pass" by releasing a "spank-worthy collection of its contestants in lingerie." Fakih is wearing less clothing in her glamor shot than in her pole-dancing pics—we're talking fishnets, a garter and a bra compared to a tank top and booty shorts. In all seriousness, you're likely to see racier getups on suburban soccer moms at their local strip aerobics class.

"The beauty queen's fall from grace has been institutionalized and mainstreamed," Clark-Flory continues. "The post-win scandal is now every bit an expected and essential part of the pageant as the swimsuit portion of the show. It's all so predictable and boring. Could it be that we're nearing maximum sex scandal capacity?"

Not a chance. Clark-Flory is right that it's boring, predictable, and hypocritical for the Miss USA pageant to expect completely virginal contestants when the pageant itself encourages its Misses to embody the other half of that particular dichotomy.

But this pattern—parading its contestants in string bikinis and high-heels, and then clutching its pearls over any unsanctioned skin-showing—is hardly an idiosyncrasy of the pageant circuit. This comes from a long and storied tradition of (a) expecting women to be extremely sexy, and then (b) furiously policing their sexuality by confining it to particular contexts, which are controlled by (c) assigned (usually) male guardians, like fathers, husbands, and pageant organizers.

That's why Americans have got our sexy teen pop stars who are saving themselves for marriage, our Christian true-believers who are saving their breast implants for their husbands,  and our beauty queens who are explicitly judged on how sexy they are—as long as they're only sexy for Donald Trump. Last year, Miss California USA funded Carrie Prejean's breast implants, only to ditch her when she almost showed them off. It doesn't matter that these beauty queens are often wearing less clothes in the pageant than they are in their "sexy photo scandals"—they're still not saving themselves sufficiently, and for that they deserve to be shamed.

Trump, like many arbiters of female sexuality before him, wants a lady in the street but a freak in the, uh, swimsuit competition. He'll never find one—it's difficult to find a young woman who can perform sexuality at Miss-USA-standards without any practice.  So what's the only way to keep the dichotomy alive? Dole out the shaming when any less-than-perfectly-chaste photos arise. In an age when beauty pageant interest is flagging, the American public is still invested in that virgin-whore narrative—and slut-shaming for fun and profit has proved a reliable investment for Trump.

* Irish academic Dylan Evans has been accused of sexual harassment after discussing a paper on bat fellatio with a female colleague. Seems like a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation to me; at the same time, I'm not entirely convinced that this guy wasn't discussing bat fellatio in the creepiest way possible. The New Scientist report is vague:

It seems there was more to the grievance between Evans and the complainant than the fellatio paper incident, but an independent investigation found that Evans was not guilty of sexual harassment. The investigation stated that it was reasonable for the colleague to have been offended and that showing the paper was a joke with a sexual innuendo, but that it was not Evans' intention to cause offence.

Evans was censured by the University, which he says "may" prevent him from securing tenure. So what sort of behavior was Evans involved in beyond the bat fellatio incident? Here's an excerpt from his colleague's complaint:

Since he arrived at the school last year, Dr Evans has often come to my office, generally early in the morning and always uninvited, to talk mainly about himself.

On many occasions he used unwelcome patting, hugging, kissing on the cheeks and touching behaviour with me; he also used to make compliments on my beauty or the way I was dressed.

I told him that I do not appreciate compliments as they do not mean anything to me.

Some high-profile academics—like Tufts' Daniel Dennett and Harvard's Steven Pinker—have come to Evans' defense:

Dennett calls the punishment "an outrageous violation of academic freedom" and Pinker says the "absurd and shameful" judgment "runs contrary to the principle of intellectual freedom and freedom of speech, to say nothing of common sense."

Ah, the freedom to unwelcome-pat. Look: There are hundreds of contexts in which one can discuss a bat fellatio paper with a colleague. We should probably consider that before concluding that sexual harassment policies are killing our freedoms.

* The newly-crowned Miss USA, Rima Fakih, is "the first Arab-American and Muslim to win the title." Is this a sign of the widening of traditional American beauty standards, or an Islamofascist conspiracy?

* Meanwhile, some guy at the Huffington Post has called her a whore.

* Glenn Beck and the performance of femininity through fake tears.

Photo via Wikipedia Commons

Pageant spokesman Roger Neal said Tuesday it appears the 21-year-old Prejean has run afoul of several sections of the 12-page contract that prospective contestants were required to sign before competing in the state contest.

The contract contains a clause asking participants whether they have conducted themselves "in accordance with the highest ethical and moral standards" and if they've ever been photographed nude or partially nude.

Ah yes, because the "highest ethical and moral standards" are crystal clear in an organization which PROMOTES LADIES WALKING AROUND IN SWIMSUITS THAT SHOW OFF THE FAKE BOOBS IT BANKROLLS.

The distance that Miss California USA is attempting to place between its own sexism and Prejean's homophobia doesn't just call attention to its hypocrisy—it also reveals its deep ignorance of the marriage issue.

Really, supporting gay marriage means embracing marriage equality in all unions, and extending marriage rights to same-sex couples is a tacit rejection of marriage as a sexist institution. Giving two men or two women the right to marry means dismantling the idea that stable marriages are achieved only by embracing traditional roles—one person (the man) is the strong, rational worker, while the other (the woman) is the submissive, emotional caregiver. Gay marriage is, indeed, a threat to traditional "opposite marriage"—and it's as much about fighting sexism as it is homophobia.

Yesterday, Keith Olbermann and Michael Musto took five minutes out of their busy schedules to skewer anti-gay-marriage Miss California Carrie Prejean after the "news" broke that the Miss California Organization had paid for Prejean's breast implants. Olbermann and Musto choose to shame Prejean by tearing into her body—riffing on boobs as "performance enhancers," saying the Miss California Organization's comments "added saline to the wound," and comparing her breasts to basketballs.

A blogger at the Conservative XPress responded to the Olbermann segment, writing, "Anyone know of any women's rights groups defending this woman yet? Nope? Didn't think so."

I'll do it.

Why is the commentary on Prejean's anti-gay commentary so devoid of the context of the Beauty Pageant?

So, Carrie Prejean is a homophobe. Is that any surprise, seeing that she's a product of a pageant machine which proudly parades its sexism in front of television screens across America? And now, the mainstream media is shaming Prejean for her pageant-consistent beliefs because she did something that would—what—help her win a beauty pageant?

The Miss California Organization leaking the news of Prejean's boob job is not sweet revenge for her intolerant comments. The organization paying for her fake breasts only reiterates the fact that pageant organizers deal in and profit from sexism, not public service. Meanwhile, they act completely sanctimonious when one of their fembot minions voices another shameful view? What a clusterfuck.

Try to think of a situation where a man is forced to parade his near-naked body in front of celebrity judges and millions of television viewers for an hour, and then speak for about ten seconds on public policy. It doesn't happen. Everyone knows those women weren't chosen for their policy positions, and that they essentially have no business commenting on political issues. And yet, the Q&A section remains. Why? To produce Youtube videos of pretty girls stumbling over "thinky" questions.

Perhaps the Prejean blowup will move pageant organizers to be more careful about coaching their representatives on the Q&A. But who cares? It's still a fucking beauty pageant.

Last night, NBC aired the 2009 "Miss USA" pageant, and apparently about a minute of the telecast was actually kind of interesting. Among the pageant's barely-recognizable celebrity judges was gossip blogger Perez Hilton, who managed to emerge from the pageant's cloud of spray tan and tacky gowns to ask Miss California Carrie Prejean a real question (above): What are her thoughts on gay marriage?

Here's what Prejean had to say:

"Well, I think it's great that Americans are able to choose one or the other. Um, we live in a land that you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage and, you know what, in my country and my family, I think that—I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anyone out there, but that's how I was raised, and that's how I think it should be—between a man and a woman. Thank you."

The answer was met with cheers and boos. Hilton responded instantly with his bitch face, but waited to crawl back into the safety of his gossip blog empire to call Prejean a "dumb bitch" and declare her response "the worst answer in pageant history"—putting it below Miss Teen USA South Carolina's infamous pageant Q&A performance:

[youtube:v=qQdhMSEqhfg]

Hey, what California lacks in South Carolina's eloquence, it makes up for in bigotry.