Pagent girls have always been sterotyped as blondes with good looks but no brians. The different pageants have tried hard to make it seem to the public what it is supposed to be, a scholarship program. But with the swimsuit and evening gown competitons this is still so hard to believe. In the Miss Teen USA pageant the sterotype of "dumb blondes" seemed to be more like truth than sterotype.

In todays society the internet has provided a way for people to express themselves. This can be done through writing a blog or webcams. But sometimes people who do not want to "express themselves" on the internet end up all over the internet but not by choice.

This is the case of Miss South Carolina Teen, Caitlin Upton. Miss South Carolina was made famous overnight, but probably not in the way she would have liked to become famous for. Caitlin Upton was in a slight state of shock when she heard the question she had to answer in front of national television. She was asked why one-fifth of Americans can not find the United States on a map. Like most people would have done, she froze. Caitlin started rambling on about South Africa and throwing words in like, “such as”, “um” and “like” to possibly help her answer. Clearly this did not help her answer, probably only hurt her answer, and made her sound even more uneducated. Caitlin Upton later explained, "I wasn't expecting [the question]. I lost my train of thought." Host Mario Lopez says, "It was a very intense moment. It's live TV. You don't know what the question is until you get up there. And I believe that she misunderstood it. She went down the wrong road and couldn't figure out how to get back to the right one," he says. "I felt really badly for her." When her time was up Caitlin Upton was probably relieved that it was over and ready to move on.
Well, in today’s world moving on can be harder than it used to be. Caitlin was nervous about national television when what she should have been more nervous about was YouTube. USA Today states, “Miss South Carolina Teen became a YouTube sensation early this week after butchering the answer to a question about U.S. geography lessons. By Tuesday morning, the video clip had attracted nearly 3.5 million views in only three days”. Miss South Carolina’s embarrassing moment lasted more than she had bargained for. The next day she was given another chance on the Today show on NBC. There she said, "Personally, my friends and I, we know exactly where the United States is on a map. I don't know anyone else who doesn't. If the statistics are correct, I believe there should be more emphasis on geography in our education so people will learn how to read maps better." But why is it that this embarrassing moment was an instant YouTube hit and not her “re-do” on the Today show? Is it perhaps because people enjoy watching other people “suffer”? No person who wants to be respected by others would want this video of themselves to be on the internet. But people are continually not giving Caitlin Upton any respect by watching this video. I think part of the reason why people continually watch this video is because it is not themselves who are being embarrassed. Sara Tucker says in Convergences, “Regardless of where one falls on the technophile/phobe spectrum, it is hard not to be captivated by the potential of witnessing something uncensored…” No matter how technological savvy people are, they enjoy watching videos on the internet at places such as YouTube. For some reason the videos where people are embarrassing themselves seem to be the most famous and have the most views. One reason why these videos seem to have the most views could be because the people watching the videos are not the ones in the videos embarrassing themselves. It seems as though knowing that the embarrassing video is not of you makes the video more enjoyable and funnier to watch. But if the video was of yourself you would be praying that nobody would find it and watch it. Another reason why this video was viewed so many times could be because most people seem to dislike pageants. The reason why I first watched the video is because I think pageants are stupid and superficial, and I heard that a girl in the pageant apparently fit the mold of my previous thoughts about pageants.
Caitlin Upton would not have gone through the amount of embarrassment that she went through if the contest was during a time when there was no internet. But we live in a time where the internet, more specifically, YouTube, is way for people to say what they want and express themselves to the world…even if it is not about themselves.
By: Whitney Myers