Miss America turns 100 this week. Does anybody care?

Miss America turns 100 this week, capping off a century of twists and turns for the beauty pageant-turned-college-scholarship-competition with a muted version of its former self — sans swimsuits, star power or even a slot on network television.

"Miss America has evolved in society as women in society have evolved," notes the updated website, adding that this year's competition comes with a record $100,000 in scholarships at stake. "This past year, candidates were no longer judged on outward appearance … The organization stands for empowering young women across the country to be the best they can be through leadership, talent, communication skills and smarts."

Founded in 1921 by a group of Atlantic City, N.J., businessmen, the original pageant — called the Atlantic City Bathing Beauty Contest — was held just after Labor Day in order to create enough excitement to extend the Jersey Shore summer season by an extra week. It was a big hit.

And though it was also aiming to celebrate the "independent woman," controversy around the focus on physical beauty persisted through the decades — most notably in 1968, when a group of fired-up feminists converged on the Atlantic City boardwalk, right outside of what they called the "cattle auction." There, they protested the pageant's inherent sexism and racism (the contest was open only to women "of the white race" until 1950, and it would take until 1970 for the first Black woman to compete), and threw their bras into trash bins (though did not actually set them on fire, as the story often goes).

More drama around the issue of sexism — and of shedding that image — swirled around the event in recent years, including, in 2017, with the infamous scandal involving the leaking of vulgar emails by then-CEO Sam Haskell who was forced to resign, and especially under the 19-month reign of Gretchen Carlson.

Carlson, Miss America 1989 and later a Fox News anchor who became a symbol of the #MeToo movement when she filed a lawsuit against then-Fox News chairman and CEO Roger Ailes claiming sexual harassment, faced accusations by Miss America 2018 Cara Mund that she and other leaders "silenced" and "bullied" her (Carlson denied all charges). She sparked outrage that same year when, as board chair, she helped rebrand the event as a competition called Miss America 2.0 and did away with the swimsuit portion, prompting calls for her ouster from dedicated fans.

"Change is difficult," Carlson told ABC News just a year before stepping down.

And the changes just kept coming — including a permanent move from its traditional home base of Atlantic City (although it had left temporarily before when a 2005 relocation took the pageant to Las Vegas for a decade), not to mention a switch from September to December and, after moving its broadcast around to various networks and seeing its lowest ratings in 2018 and 2019 (after appearing to have reached its peak back in the ’80s), a departure from network television altogether.

This year, as in 2019 (there was no Miss America in 2020 due to the pandemic), the Miss America contest — which held preliminaries on Dec. 12 and 13 with Miss Alaska, Miss New York, Miss Illinois and Miss Texas winning in talent and social impact categories — will take place at the Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut. It will be livestreamed on Peacock at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 16. But will anyone watch? And does Miss America still matter?

"There's no comparison to its heyday, in the ’50s, when it was first on TV — and even before that, from the ’40s through the ’60s, when women didn't have as many opportunities, and it was a seen as a launching pad and a tool of social mobility," Hilary Levey Friedman, a Brown University professor of sociology and author of Here She Is: The Complicated Reign of the Beauty Pageant in America, tells Yahoo Life. "To the women who compete, it's obviously super relevant, it's just that that group is much, much smaller now."

One could even say that Miss America is a victim of its own success.

"In many ways," Levey Friedman says, "some of the things that pageants fought for — women's leadership, the freedom to pursue different careers — are part of why they're less relevant now."

What distanced diehard fans

"It was known as the 'Super Bowl of pageants,' and it's turning 100 this year, and we just don't have that many pop-culture events that have been around that long," Levey Friedman, daughter of Miss America 1970 Pamela Eldred, says. Still, its importance has faded. "For many years, it was amazingly relevant, and it helped define what American womanhood looked like."

And when it changed to mirror the advances in society — without much warning — many longtime supporters felt abandoned.

"Apart from the substance of the swimsuit competition, I think what upset and shocked a lot of fans — because this was no surprise, it was talked about for years and it was the thing feminists got most worked up about — is the way it was done: very quickly," says Levey Friedman. "The rollout wasn't great. State winners had already been selected that year. So, even from a marketing point of view, they could've said, 'this is your chance to say bye to [the swimsuit competition],' they could've honored it and even upped their profile."

Why Miss USA and Miss Universe, meanwhile, appear to still be going strong

Miss Universe, which took place in Israel on Sunday, came shortly after Miss USA, which was actually a Miss America spinoff — a for-profit company founded in 1952 by Catalina Swimsuits as a promotional tool after that year's Miss America, Yolande Betzbeze, said she would refuse to appear at any events wearing a swimsuit, prompting the organization to drop Catalina as a sponsor. And while Sunday's broadcast on Fox saw a 30 percent drop in viewership from 2019, the Miss USA pageant appears, at least outwardly, to have retained much of its glitzy, glamorous excitement.

"They've never been confused about who they are," Levey Friedman points out about Miss USA. "It started at Miss America in the 50s because [Betzbeze] refused to appear in a bathing suit, and it's always been about how you look, and glamour — with some rebranding around making a difference in community, but no talent, no platform. And that's part of the reason they've been successful."

So, is Miss America going away?

"For the past many years," the pageant expert says, "my prediction was that Miss America would be held in a hotel ballroom and not on TV, and here we are. It's not going anywhere, because there is a dedicated group of people who want to be part of it."

And while it "will never be what it was," many things "are not what they were," she says, including other contests, such as what was once called America's Junior Miss — known for launching the career of 1963 winner Diane Sawyer — but now reworked into the nonprofit scholarship and leadership program Distinguished Young Women.

Fans and viewers are important to Miss America, but not the most essential, after all, as that ranking belongs to the women who still choose to compete — an important, modern distinction. "It's a choice," says Levey Friedman, "and in the ’50s and ’60s it used to feel like this is what you had to do if you wanted a particular kind of life."

And so now, "I think people will keep doing it," she says, "because they want to keep doing it."

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