Miss North Carolina Claims the Miss USA Crown

Meet Kristin Dalton, the Miss North Carolina who was crowned Miss USA on Sunday.

The only problem is that nobody cares. The Miss USA pageant on NBC was watched by only 5 million people this year, down 12% from last year, and a pretty steep 32% from 2007. And nobody’s even paying attention to the winner, because everyone’s focused on runner-up Miss California’s anti-gay tirade.

The Miss America pageant’s ratings are even lower, scoring just 3.5M viewers in 2009 versus 9.8M in 2004, one of the last years it aired on a major network — it’s now airing on CMT. Pageant Place — a 2007 MTV reality series about the lives of the winners of the Miss Teen USA, Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants — lasted eight episodes and was not renewed.

Are Americans rejecting the notion of a beauty queen? Or do we just have enough beautiful people famous for doing nothing in our entertainment circles? I think we’re just so over-exposed to gorgeous women famous for crotch shots and drunken tirades and late-night exploits that we’re downright bored with a beautiful girl who’s famous for walking in heels and a bikini.

As interest in the “grown-up” beauty pageants wane, television series focusing on child beauty pageants, like Toddlers & Tiaras and Little Miss Perfect, have found ratings success (at least by cable standards). We’re interested in watching these little girls devote their lives to learning how to be Miss USA, but we tire of them by the time they’re actually old enough to compete at that level. By then, we’re looking for her counterpart who spent less time with her nose in the air and more time with her nose on a mirror.

Upgrade? I’m not sure.

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