Aren't modern "Beauty Pageants" pretty much entirely by and for women?

[astro]

In thinking about it aren’t almost all modern Beauty Pageants pretty much female “pageant mom” initiated, supported and dominated from beginning to end? Other than occasionally being recruited to serve as Judges, what do men really have to do with perpetuating the modern Pageant culture?

[Nobody]

Uhm…It’s usually a guy who hosts them?
Actually though, I don’t know the answer to your question seeing as how I don’t watch beauty pageants.

[Measure_for_Measure]

Hm. According to this site

The Miss America competition and other “beauty” contests, have obviously become less sexually-oriented as the years progress, due to the basically conservative nature of the competition audience…Miss Universe, Miss America’s strongest rival pageant, also has a firm grip on the American public’s viewing taste. Despite the huge erosion in network T.V.'s ratings in the 1980’s caused by Cable, beauty pageants still pull in high rating figures… For example, the promotional literature used by the Madison Square Garden corporation to sell advertisers commercial time during pageants indicates that the Miss Universe pageant of 1988 had a 15.7 Nielsen rating, and its preliminary pageant, Miss U.S.A., had a 16.2 rating… According to these statistics Miss USA alone has a viewership of 50,117,000, composed of 50% women, 30% adult men, 10% young children, and 9% teenagers [The remaining 1% is not explained.]90 According to former Miss USA Paula Peterson Burwell, Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants "attract more female viewers in the prime consumer age bracket of 18 to 49, which makes its advertising slots more valuable. Miss America tends to attract relatively young and old viewers."91

Underline added by moi.

I would say that the audience is the key factor to consider, more than the producers of these shows. And, to my small surprise, most (not all) of the viewers of these gigs appear to be women.

Thus, although the swimsuit competition is de rigour, it does not get the majority of the airtime, AFAIK.

As an aside, I’ve noticed that astro is fairly adept at posing interesting questions in both GD and GQ. Kudos.