Contests have also been held in bars and nightclubs, during intermissions in boxing or wrestling matches and at car shows.
Miss America dropped the swimsuit competition in 2018, as part of a general change to avoid judging women based on physical appearance.
[6][7] There are some swimsuit competitions which aim to judge the beauty of a single part of body, such as female buttocks (for example, the Miss Bum Bum contest held in Brazil, and the Miss Reef contest held in several South American countries).
[citation needed] Despite their popularity and women's voluntary participation, swimsuit competitions, especially bikini contests, are sometimes controversial.
[13] When the winner Kiki Håkansson from Sweden was crowned in a bikini, countries with religious traditions threatened to withdraw delegates.
The organizers later announced that the bikini would be replaced by one-piece swimsuits and sarongs, traditional beachwear on the resort island of Bali.
[24] Brooke Magnanti argued that the decision to yield to religious fundamentalists was not a victory for feminism: While no great fan of pageants there's something about this that rubs the wrong way.
[29][32][33] In the Miss Earth 2017, Carousel Productions, the organizer of the pageant, was criticized for objectifying women when the delegates wore swimsuits in the Beauty of Figure and Form, with their faces concealed by a veil, a segment first introduced in the Miss Philippines Earth 2017 pageant.
[34][35][36][37] The event was one of the three preliminary judging segments of the pageant that include Poise and Beauty of Face and Environmental and Intelligence Competition.
The organisers deny the allegations that the competition is a camouflage for sexual exploitation, and instead describe it as an awareness event about the importance of children's fitness.
[40] Beginning in 2016, the Miss Teen USA pageant removed the swimsuit competition and replaced it with an athleticwear round.