Miss America: A Piece of (Chicken) Meat

4th May 2009

Miss America: A Piece of (Chicken) Meat

posted in Arts & Culture, Feminist Topics |

You’ve heard of the phrase ” a piece of meat,” right? Feminists popularized the term in the 1970s to describe feelings of being sexually exploited, objectified and commodified. If you read accounts by rape victims especially, it’s a common refrain. Peta is infamous for treating women as pieces of meat in order to get mostly hetero men to stop eating meat, but it’s the all-American, redblooded Miss America pageant that takes the phrase to disturbing levels. NY Times columnist Tara Parker-Pope reports:

The controversy surrounding Miss California, Carrie Prejean, continues, with state pageant officials admitting that they paid for her surgical breast enhancement. And in an odd twist, pageant officials also offered a glimpse into other ways a pageant contestant might alter her body shape, including the use of “chicken cutlets.”

As it turns out, a “chicken cutlet” is the common term used for a silicone bra insert that is used to create the illusion of larger breasts. Apparently they get their name from the fact that they look like cuts of boneless chicken.

Read the full interview between The Early Show Maggie Rodriguez and Keith Lewis, co-director of the pageant, here, in which Lewis defends inclusion of the swimsuit competition and breast implants in general.

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 4th, 2009 at 7:08 pm and is filed under Arts & Culture, Feminist Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

1 On May 4th, 2009, Alyssa (The 39 year-old) said:

It’s all so wrong, in so many ways…

posted on May 4th, 2009 at 9:44 pm

2 On May 4th, 2009, Twistie said:

I’m just glad I finished dinner before reading this.

posted on May 4th, 2009 at 10:10 pm

3 On May 4th, 2009, Bronwyn said:

Eww. But not exactly surprising- while I was surprised to hear that the pageant paid for surgery, I’m pretty familiar with all the various “beauty products” pageant participants are known to use.

posted on May 4th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

4 On May 4th, 2009, lilacsigil said:

A chicken cutlet (or chicken fillet as it’s known in Australia, both the cut of meat and the insert) is not just any boneless cut of chicken, it’s actually the chicken breast. Just for added creepiness.

posted on May 4th, 2009 at 11:46 pm

5 On May 5th, 2009, Lc said:

chicken fillets is a term commonly used in Australia for the sillicone inserts, and although the whole meat and objectification connotations that follow from such a term are extremely troubling, aside from that most of the icky feelings i get about chicken fillets is the way that my friends and other girls my age (im in my mid teens) laugh about wearing them, to make up for their ‘inadequacies’ or whatever, as if its all a bit of fun.. maybe bra burning is a bit old hat, but hopefully people can still remember the motives behind it it aside from some ‘feminazi’ extremist act; is it asking too much to allow women to have breasts that are not artificially pushed into an unnatural shape and not condemned as a taboo for performing their natural act as breastfeeding, the main biological reason aside from sex? but, i digress.

posted on May 5th, 2009 at 5:48 am

6 On May 5th, 2009, Rachel said:

maybe bra burning is a bit old hat, but hopefully people can still remember the motives behind it it aside from some ‘feminazi’ extremist act

I agree with what you write, but as an aside… I read Ruth Rosen’s “The World Split Open” for a women’s history class a few years back and she explained that the infamous bra-burning never actually happened. There was a permit issue or something of that kind of nature. My mom, the avowed anti-feminist who is yet actually semi-feminist, always uses that as an example of the evils of feminism. When I told her that it never happened, she said, “Oh, no it did. I saw pictures of it in the newspaper.” *Shakes head*.

posted on May 5th, 2009 at 9:50 am

7 On May 5th, 2009, Mary Sue said: