I've never been a big fan of one way beauty pageants choose to award scholarship money to young women (Swimsuits! Why did it have to be swimsuits!). But pageant contestants using the competition to campaign for LGBT rights and gender-based activism? I'll take that!

Last year, Miss D.C. 2009 Jen Corey campaigned on a recycling platform, "Let's Talk Trash!" Once crowned, though, Corey devoted significant effort in her reign to speaking out against public sexual assault in the District and voicing her support for D.C.'s LGBT community.

Just last night, Claire Buffie was named Miss New York 2010 in this year's Miss America pageant on a platform of gay rights. (Local angle: She designed Corey's website!) From Buffie's official bio:

Miss New York 2010, Claire Buffie, is an outspoken advocate of human rights, opening the dialogue about equality amoungst youth, teens and adults alike with her platform "Straight for Equality: Let's Talk." The issues of gay rights make up the civil rights movement of our generation and reach far beyond marriage equality. As Miss New York 2010, Claire aims to break the stigma of marginalized youth, eliminating discriminatory vocabulary and changing the climate in New York schools. She celebrates diversity and the things that make us all unique and aims to instill pride, dignity and respect in developing minds and compassionate hearts. This will be a year of change in New York State and Claire is ready to support this incredible movement.

It's an interesting moment for America when the most traditional of contests for women begins championing the rights of people who are marginalized based on gender and sexual orientation. Buffie's Twitter stream offers a look at what life is like for a woman juggling pageant duties and LGBT activism. Turns out it includes regular work-outs, some spray-tan application, and plenty of PFLAG meetings—and that's all on top of her day job. "Awesome Photoshoot with @nycpageants and bianca Thomas and now off to the Straight for Equality Gala with @pflagnyc!!" one Tweet reads. Here's another: "Work. @pflagnyc board meeting. Work out. Dance. @GLEEonFOX ! Reply to 945793 emails. Sleep. Can I eat in there somewhere?" Let's hope the answer to that last question is "yes."

This Week In Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: August 20, 1883

Dateline: Long Branch, NJ

1. Women must be pretty.

2. But they are born ugly, so we must make them pretty.

3. Women who go to the beach make this task very difficult for us.

4. And women who actually swim are nearly beyond help.

5. It is rather amusing, however, just how ugly swimming makes women!

6. Women who swim are so ugly, they don't even want men to look at their ugly bodies! But we do look at them, and then detail their hideousness in the pages of the New York Times.

7. Well, at least they are still wealthy.

8. Though these ugly, oceanic women allow no one to see how profoundly uncomfortable they are, I know they are profoundly uncomfortable, because I understand women. Even the ugly ones.

9. If a woman is not pretty, then she does not enjoy herself. As is proper.

10. But perhaps the water will help to cure her extreme ugliness anyhow.

11. And remember, even Butterfaces could be hiding a sensual ankle in the surf.

12. [Obligatory rhapsodic account of historical beach leering].

13. [Obligatory rhapsodic account of modern beach leering].

14. Foreign women! They are kind of hot, but so ignorant of the customs of our modern American beach leering!

15. This one hot foreign actress wore the ugliest swimsuit one time.

16. She was a shitty actress, too.

17. Yes, I am using the term "dudes." In 1883.

18. Girls can't swim!

19. Well, at least they display their pearly white arms when they're trying. Oh, did I mention that I am also a racist?

20. One reason for women to swim, of course, is to wear an outfit which mimics an animal's yoke, in order to infer that she would make a good, obedient wife.

21. Have I not sufficiently compared women to animals? Women women zebras.

22. Now I am leering at children.

23. Aaaaand back to the racism.

24. Old women are disgusting and must be kept indoors.

25. I like watching girls fall down.

26. Middle-aged women are the most heinous, for they insist upon swimming, though their bodies are universally reviled.

27. Have I mentioned swimming is for men?

This Week In Sexist History:

Good 'Ol Day: July 22, 1893

Dateline: Long Branch, N.J.

Subject: The summer of 1893 is nearly ruined for this sad sack New Jersey scene reporter—until the sexiest underage bather this side of puberty catches his roving eye!

What's lifting these male vacationers from the depths of their pathetic existences? If you've been studying your Sexist History, you'd know that the answer probably starts with Pretty and ends with Girls:

Oh, it makes no difference what shape you are in the freewheeling social scene of the Jersey surf! Unless, of course, you're "pretty girl" shaped, in which case your body will likely be obsessively detailed in the pages of the New York Times. Proceed:

Euugh! How old is the young lady in the red swimsuit, anyway? One the one hand, it's great that this girl is still in her spluttering-around-in-the-water bathing suit phase, and not yet in her crippled-by-body-issues bathing suit phase. On the other hand, I'm willing to bet the girl's sexy childhood innocence was shattered riiiiiight arrroooound July 23, 1893—the day this Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Reporter's ruminations on her sexy childhood innocence was printed in the pages of the New York Times.

How can Skeevy Turn-of-the-Century Reporter possibly redeem himself from the true skeeviness of ogling bathing children? By turning next to an even sleazier specimen: The Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Sketch Artist.

Done and done.