A Bikini Contest is a competition for young women in bikinis, when the most beautiful girl is chosen. It revolves around participants’ physical attractiveness rather than their qualities or skills, or bikini itself. Bikini girls can compete on a local, country and world scale. By the way, the most prestigious beauty competition, the Miss World pageant, originally started as a one-off Bikini Contest (1951) and later, only when it became a popular entertainment event, bikinis were replaced with swimsuits.

Nowadays online Bikini Contests are getting more and more popular. Participants submit their pictures on the Internet and the visitors of the site judge them giving each a score usually from 1 to 10. These competitions normally start at the beginning of the year and last till the end, when Miss or Queen is chosen.

Traditional Bikini Contests can take place in bars, nightclubs, or at beaches. Today the contestants of some major pageants such as Miss Teen USA are often required to wear bikinis as part of the swimsuit competitions. Besides, bikini girls have to put on sashes indicating a city, state, or a country they come from, as they do in larger beauty contests.

How does it all start?

The history of beauty contests traces back to an ancient European custom to choose symbolic kings and queens for different festivities. Our ancestors believed that young girls symbolized the nation, virtue, or other abstract ideals.

However, these events had very little in common with modern pageants. The first real beauty contest took place in 1854 and was arranged by P.T.Barnum. But it was closed down because of public protest and people haven’t heard of such competitions till 1880, when the first “bathing beauty pageant" was staged at a beach of Delaware. Since then, beauty contests became an essential part of summer beach festivals. They were judged by jury panel and included preliminary eliminations, an evening gown competition and musical variety shows. Still, they haven’t been very popular among middle-class society until World War II, when talent competitions came into fashion.

Today different beauty pageants are all the rage. The most famous contests are Miss World (1951), Miss Universe (1952), Miss International and Miss Earth (2001), which are preceded by a number of local competitions. These large-scale events are considered of world importance by many people and it’s a great honor for young girls to represent their country in one of these international contests. Besides, today they constitute an essential part of commercial beauty industry and bring a good profit.

However, there are people who doesn’t approve of these events. Feminists regard them as degrading to females, and particularly object to Bikini Contests, where the participants are dressed only in swimsuits and high-heeled shoes. They are not the only ones to criticize these competitions - from time to time these events attract demonstrators and once even caused mass riots.

But most people consider them as titillating entertainment events, and despite all the objections, beauty pageants remain their high ratings and the majority of the public enjoy viewing them. While feminists criticize Bikini Contests, young beauties are eager to take part in them.

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