Mirror, Mirror

Miss America: Countdown to the Crown on TLC bothers me. Not because of the blatant unoriginality, this lame attempt to update what is essentially the oldest reality-show on television to the age of Big Brother, not even because it is without a doubt one of the most bland hours available on cable television. No, Countdown to the Crown bothers me because it purports to offer up role models for young girls based on the most vapid, colorless, and ultimately uninteresting women the country apparently has to offer.

On the show, the Miss States compete in cringe-worthy competition, putting on displays of talent that look like high school pep rallies, debating the merits of curling their hair inwards versus out, and generally standing around with tight smiles and blank stares. Virtually indistinguishable from one another, these fembots have all the personality of Japanese love dolls, with even less of the appeal. While I imagine the show was an attempt to make the Miss America Pageant germane again, it instead seems to prove just how irrelevant the distinction really is. If the women are that interchangeable, indistinguishable beyond their tone of skin and shade of hair dye, then what's the ultimate difference who wins anyway? Miss America is a crown for the most anti-outrageous; the winner wins for being not the most different, the most original, but for being the most like the rest only more.

The flip side of this coin is of course Rock of Love Bus on VH1. Packing two tour busses with the most outrageous skanks available (and I do mean available), the show plies them with booze (Tequila is virtually everywhere, even in the bathroom) and sets them all on heat-seeking mode, competing for the affections of a has-been rocker that peaked in the late 80's, and other than a brief appearance on Billboard's Top 200 albums last year (most likely due to his ubiquitous nature on VH1), hasn't had a real hit since a sex tape more popular for the participation of Pamela Anderson almost half a decade ago. The stated goal of the show is to find a suitable lifemate for Bret, someone he can rock the night away with until the stars fall from the sky. But the obvious goal to anyone that's actually watched the show (or seen a commercial, or just heard about it) is to create the biggest, most silicone-filled, insecurity-fueled, needy clusterfuck of an orgy ever seen since the days of Caligula.

Now I'm not saying these ladies are any more suitable as role models for young women than the pageant contestants of America's crown jewels. But I do respect them more, as well as the innate honesty of the show, as nobody on the Love Bus seems to pretend for even a moment that they are anything other than what they are. These walking, talking cautionary tales cloaked in stiletto heels and cheap extensions are to me the real Miss Americas of the post-modern age, and at the very least, stripping them of all else, they sure are more entertaining.