Miss Harvard Pageant Not Place for Politics

To the editors:

It seems that the main objection Emma S. MacKinnon ’05 has to the Miss Harvard pageant is that IMPACT, the group sponsoring the show, has “politically correct ambitions”—we haven’t done enough to “challenge the beauty pageant regime” (Opinion, “Miss What?” March 13). As the president of IMPACT, I don’t see this as a problem—IMPACT is, by virtue of our mission statement, an apolitical organization.

IMPACT serves to raise money for small non-profits in developing countries that benefit children. Remaining apolitical has allowed us to focus on immediate relief and serving basic needs, such as food, shelter and clothing, and promoting literacy and education in places where children wouldn’t normally have access to these simple resources. Being apolitial, however, does limit us. It means that we’ll take great pains to not objectify women, but also not to slam the “beauty pageant regime”—this is neither our focus nor our place.

MacKinnon’s remaining complaint is that our show will be boring. As a politically neutral organization, our primary goal is to raise as much money as possible, not to make charged statements about volatile issues. Successful IMPACT events in the past have shown that a performance need not be controversial in order to be entertaining. Rather than take my word for it, I hope that MacKinnon will attend the show before forming an opinion on its entertainment value.

Laura P. Perry ’04

March 13, 2002

The writer is president of IMPACT.