This is so unbelievably and predictably stupid, I don’t know where to begin.

This is one of those stories where you’ll get NO PHOTOS! and NO LINKS! because they’re all too smutty for me to share and people who want to check out that kind of stuff know where to find it ...

But anyway, shall we talk about the Miss USA Pageant? You know, the one where the contestants were all photographed in suggestive poses modeling lingerie before the competition and where the “competition” requires contestants to parade on stage wearing high heels and bikinis? The one that skewered Carrie Prejean last year when she didn’t get the social agenda memo and failed to publicly support the destruction of traditional marriage? That classy, high-brow affair?

Well, it appears that this year the Miss USA Pageant might have a real scandal on its hands. It would seem that this year’s winner, Rima Fakih, posed for sexually suggestive Miss USA photos and also waltzed around in heels and a bikini for photo opps that the pageant could use for profit.

But that is not the scandalous part.

It would seem that Ms. Fakih was found to have (Ready now? Here comes the scandal!) made videos and posed for other racy photos that might have profited someone other than the Miss USA Pageant ... possibly even herself.

This is shocking stuff. So shocking, in fact, that the usual tabloids are suggesting that Ms. Fakih might be in jeopardy of losing the Miss USA crown.

What exactly is going here? Other than Donald Trump (who owns the pageant) and lots of tabloids making lots of money?

I’ll tell you what’s going on. Our warped and twisted culture simply cannot figure out how it feels about sex and female bodies. We can’t decide whether to exploit women’s bodies in pageants or “protect” them by pretending to find offense in “scandals” like this one.

The message we come away with here is that exploiting women’s bodies for money is a perfectly acceptable endeavor, as long as it’s rich old men who profit from it. Anything else is scandalous.

Might I suggest something else? That the Miss USA Pageant—with its bikini-clad contestants answering ponderous political questions on stage and its predictable sex-infused, crown-threatening “scandals” the morning after—is a complete and total joke?

Someone needs to say it. It’s a joke. But as a mother of daughters, I’m not laughing.