Maybe you noticed, but the Miss USA pageant was in Baton Rouge last week. You probably didn’t see it; it was a pretty low-key affair.

Anyway, I don’t want to hit you over the head with what I think is wrong with Miss USA and beauty pageants in general. To any sensible person, they’re an antiquated, misogynistic relic of the times old men in white suits love to remember. “The good old days,” they might call them.

No, that’s not what I’m going to complain about, because as much as we have moved on from those times, the Donald Trumps of this world won’t let go until we pry them from their cold, dead hands. Miss USA isn’t going away anytime soon, so I guess we’ll just have to ignore it.

But this year’s event, located right here in Baton Rouge, was impossible to ignore, at least for anyone who follows The Advocate on Twitter. Amid all the usual talk about the dresses and ambiguous Hispanic-ness of the eventual winner, Nevada’s Nia Sanchez, commenters immediately latched onto Miss Indiana, Mekayla Diehl, and her “normal” body.

First off, the idea of a “normal” body is a pretty ridiculous one. What is that supposed to mean? Is it a person of median height, weight and health? Someone with the average weight of the population? Or is it what we might consider a medium amount of weight? Because none of those are the same thing.

Secondly, among a random sample of the population, Diehl would stand out. Sure, she is marginally less skinny than her extremely skinny peers, but she’s still in a beauty pageant, and thus still pretty thin. 

I want to say I’m not begrudging Diehl or the other contestants their bodies. My problem is with the media circus, that, from a crowd of supermodels, pulls the least skinny, puts her on a pedestal and pats itself on the back for being so progessive. Even EOnline.com writer Natalie Finn seemed aware of the banality of her own words when she described Diehl’s body as “curvier-than-some.”

I’m all for encouraging diversity of body types in all kinds of media, but when the alternative to the unattainable look of most pageant queens and models is the only-slightly-less-unattainable look exemplified by Diehl, it’s hard to call that progress.

Gordon Brillon is a 21-year-old mass communication junior from Lincoln, RI. Twitter: @TDR_GBrillon