Deeply Misguided #metoo Joke Causes Uproar in Miss Massachusetts Pageant

By Spencer Buell
Boston Magazine
July 9, 2018

https://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/2018/07/09/miss-massachusetts-metoo/

Photo via Instagram

I guess we should have expected that the #MeToo movement’s success over the past year would prompt powerful people and institutions to start lashing out and belittling the movement with boneheaded jokes, and that’s what has apparently gone down at the Miss Massachusetts pageant.

Maude Gorman, a former Miss Plymouth County, attracted national attention this weekend after she announced that she would hand in her crown in protest of a tone-deaf joke about #MeToo in a skit during the June 30 Miss America event. In the skit in question, the pageant’s host plays the role of someone telling God she is confused as to why the pageant will no longer include a swimsuit competition, to which a man playing God responds, “Me too,” and holds up two signs reading, “#MeToo.” Video of the performance, which elicited cheers from the crowd but prompted an immediate backlash, can be found on the Observer’s website.

The 24-year-old Gorman, a rape survivor, shared the rationale behind her decision on Instagram. “As both a survivor, and advocate for victims rights and sexual violence on a whole, I refuse to stand idly by and simply ‘let this go,'” she wrote. “Instead, I will stand up for every individual who has ever had the courage to speak out; and for every person who felt liberated by the #metoo movement.”

Today, I officially resigned from the title of Miss Plymouth County 2018. While I’m grateful for the opportunities that @missamerica creates for young women, I am also internally conflicted; as the #metoomovement was mocked on stage during the final competition of Miss Massachusetts. As both a survivor, and advocate for victims rights and sexual violence on a whole, I refuse to stand idly by and simply “let this go”. Instead, I will stand up for every individual who has ever had the courage to speak out; and for every person who felt liberated by the #metoo movement. I will not allow ANYONE to take away that empowerment and liberation, or make it anything less than what it is: AMAZING. #metoo#missplymouthcounty #nomore #rainn#surviveandthrive

The pageant might have taken a cue from the president, who at a rally last week blended a dumb joke cocktail for his fans in Montana, prodding Elizabeth Warren over what she says is Native American heritage (he says he’d donate $1 million if she takes a DNA test) while at the same time mocking the #MeToo movement. Weird, isn’t it, that someone like Donald Trump would want to undermine a movement that holds powerful people to account for abusing women?

Miss Massachusetts last week offered its “sincere and heartfelt apology” for the skit, writing on Facebook that it somehow didn’t know about it ahead of time and that in the future it will more closely monitor plans for the pageants “to be sure offensive or potentially offensive content is not allowed.”

Had Gorman not gone public with her outrage and spread the word about the skit, that might have been that. Now everyone is talking about it. That’s what accountability looks like.