Of all the cheesy, feel-good flicks of the ‘00s, there is one that stands out: the 2000 action/comedy Miss Congeniality. It kicked off our lifelong love affair with Sandra Bullock, and continues to provide plenty of laughs – but has it stood the test of time? Looking back, Miss Congeniality was actually pretty problematic.
If you haven’t seen it, stop what you’re doing and dig out your old VHS player so you can get up to speed. If you have seen it, you’d be well aware of the storyline. F.B.I Detective Gracie Hart (played by Bullock) goes undercover as a contestant to infiltrate the Miss United States beauty pageant due to an anonymous bomb threat.
At the start of the film, it becomes clear that Gracie’s workplace is a bit of a ‘boys club’. However the full extent of toxic masculinity isn’t realised until the male detectives ogle over and objectify their half-naked colleagues in picking who should go undercover.
It only gets worse as we begin to learn about Gracie’s love/hate relationship with her colleague Agent Eric Matthews (played by Benjamin Bratt). When the pair engage in a wrestling match, Eric not only slaps Gracie’s butt, but makes a pretty inappropriate gesture towards her crotch. That is straight-up sexual harassment in the workplace.
Speaking of problematic movies and TV shows, hear about how they’re being retrofitted for 2020 below:
When it’s decided that Gracie will go undercover as a Miss United States contestant, it takes a whole evening and team of people to transform her from Gracie Hart to ‘Gracie Lou Freebush’. When her final look is revealed, they’ve simply done her hair, makeup and put her in a dress and heels. What was so wrong with the way she looked before? And why do films of this era always suggest someone’s glasses are the only thing holding them back from becoming an instant beauty queen?
An ongoing theme throughout Miss Congeniality is that none of the women feel like they can eat or enjoy food. Gracie’s ‘coach’ forces her to eat celery, and she leaves her makeover “starved.” When she enjoyed a steak and beer, her coach called her out on it. When Gracie offers the other contestants pizza and beer, they question the calories, and she says, “it’s light beer and she’s going to throw it up anyway.” Trivialising eating disorders is never OK, however it does shine a light on the lengths pageant queens and models may go in order to look ‘perfect’.
Despite all these problematic moments, Miss Congeniality does have its positives. Gracie Hart is a super duper empowered woman who single-handedly saves the pageant from being bombed by (spoiler alert) Kathy Morningside AKA Candice Bergen. She also emphasises the importance of female friendships and lifting other women up, rather than tearing them down.
There’s also the fact that, at the end of the pageant, Miss New York proclaims her love for another woman in the audience. “I just want to let all the lesbians out there know: if I can make it to the Top 10, so can you…Tina, I love you!” Considering Miss Congeniality came out 20 years ago, that’s pretty progressive.
Perhaps the good qualities of the film ultimately outweigh out the bad, and as a product of its time, it really could have been a lot worse.
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