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A bikini contest is a competition where women compete against each other in bikinis.Bikini contests can take place in bars, nightclubs, at beaches, and beauty pageants. Bikini contests can also take place over the Internet by women submitting pictures of themselves in bikinis.
Women often wear sashes indicating where they are from in bikini contests, in similarity to the tradition in other beauty pageants.
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It is becoming more and more common for women to wear bikinis as part of the swimsuit competitions at major pageants. Participants in the Miss Teen USA pageant are required to wear bikinis.
The name "bikini contest" may be misleading in that the contestants are not actually contesting the bikini itself. Rather, the competition revolves around a subjective assessment of the physical attractiveness of the participants, which may or may not involve the actual bikinis they wear and/or remove during the "competition." |
History of beauty contests
Choosing symbolic kings and queens for May Day and other festivities is an ancient custom in Europe, where beautiful young women also symbolized the nation, virtue, or other abstract ideals. The first modern pageant was staged by P. T. Barnum in 1854, but his beauty contest was closed down by public protest (he had previously held dog, baby, and bird beauty contests). He substituted daguerreotypes for judging, a practice quickly adopted by newspapers, which held photo beauty contests for many decades. The first “bathing beauty pageant" took place as part of a summer festival to promote business in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in 1880. Contests became a regular part of summer beach life, with the most elaborate at Atlantic City, New Jersey, where the “Fall Frolic” attracted contestants from many cities and towns in competition for the title of Miss America. They eventually added preliminary eliminations, an evening gown competition, musical variety shows, and judging by panel. Still, the contest was shunned by middle-class society. Pageants did not become respectable until World War II, when beauty queens were recruited to sell bonds and entertain troops; scholarships and talent competitions accompanied closer scrutiny of contestants’ morals and background.
Lasvegas Bikini Contest
The modern beauty pageant can trace its origin to the Miss America pageant, first held in Atlantic City in 1921, under the title "Inter-City Beauty" contest. The following year, the title was renamed as Miss America. Other contests include the yearly Miss World competition (founded by Eric Morley in 1951), Miss Universe (founded in 1952), Miss International and Miss Earth (founded in 2001 with environmental awareness as its concern), which are the four largest and most famous international beauty contests. Women from around the world participate each year in the competitions for these titles. The organizers of the major beauty contests represent their contests as being events of world importance. A more common view is that beauty contests are titillating entertainment events of no great importance.
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