The 2011 Miss America contest provides an object lesson in the decline of American femininity. Consider the winner: This poor little girl has so physically abused herself at 17 years of age, she has to wear a wig. This sad little girl has a lined and troubled face more like a 30-year-old who has spent the last 15 years either using anabolic steroids or virilizing her physique with yo-yo dieting and boxing competitions. O, tempora! O, mores! What has happened to American womanhood that an alleged icon of femininity is so fagged-out from self-abuse at 17, she can’t even display her own hair?

When I first heard that our new Miss America was only 17, I figured this was to avoid the racy-photo scandals that have plagued previous pageant winners. Nobody is going to come forward with nude photographs of a 17-year-old girl for fear of violating child-pornography laws. Whether or not this Machiavellian speculation is true, I’d be afraid to look at this sorry little girl with her clothes off. With her beady eyes, her hatchet jawline, her manly shoulders and ribcage, her total lack of hips and barrel-like physique, what horrors lurk underneath the bikini? Of course she wants to be a politician when she grows up: The similarly built Governator also knew he wanted to be a politician when he was her age. Male hormones do make one aggressive and ambitious.

The other contestants were consistently masculine-looking. The shoulder development on Miss Hawaii, Miss Louisiana, Miss New Mexico, Miss Mississippi, Miss Florida, or Miss Arkansas would not be out of place in a natural bodybuilding competition among teenage boys. Heck, almost all of these women have wide shoulders like lady shot-putters. And what has happened to the hourglass figure and narrow waists? Women naturally have narrow waists and small ribcages; these women have seemingly given up their feminine birthrights for brutish slabs of musculature on their midsections, giving them the physique of an overcooked bratwurst. Ladies: You can’t do spot-reduction by doing 1000 sit-ups; you only build unsightly muscle that way. Eat fewer poisonous cupcakes, stop using kettlebells, and consider Pilates or yoga.

Very much worthy of honorable mention is Miss District of Columbia, Stephanie Williams, who manages to look traditionally female. Miss Idaho ain’t bad, either”€”it is a shame she didn’t show off her natural curves to contrast with the freakish musculature on ample display, though perhaps it was her feminine modesty which made her so much more appealing than the others.