Pageant News Bureau - Mrs. Maryland America

March is International Imagination Month, when opinion leaders around the world are urged to "look beyond the apparent and the familiar." The goal is to find the "magic beneath the surface," according to the Global Imagination Group.

We at pageant.com chose to participate in this effort because pageants are too often dismissed as superficial, mindless entertainment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Pageants reflect the deepest sociological trends of any given period.

The liveliest trend today is the re-glamorization of marriage. The luscious, adventurous married woman is the new feminine ideal. In TV terms, we have gone from "Sex and the City," about singles on the prowl, to "Desperate Housewives," about wives who are often more daring than desperate.

We had to choose a photographic example for our submission to GIG, and we settled on this set of pictures from the most recent Mrs. Maryland America Pageant. There is something vibrant about these images. We detect a kind of energy that we did not see in "Mrs." pageants as recently as 2000. These women are not only sexy and confident, they have depth and complexity. They have rich inner lives.

If we are fortunate enough to win the grant from the Global Imagination Group, we plan to endow an institute for the study of married women's pageants. Such an undertaking is long overdue. If we receive matching funds, we will consider founding a bikini think tank.

(The Global Imagination Group is organized under international agreements. Its slogan, "Everything is Imaginary," is not to be used without the express consent of GIG. We are grateful for permission in this instance.)