Exactly how much hermaphroditism is too much for Miss Universe?

Jenna Talackova has been served no injustice by being disqualified from this year’s Miss Universe Canada pageant. The 23-year-old beauty-queen-hopeful may have lost her shot at the crown, but the worldwide attention currently being lavished upon her undoubtedly outshines any notoriety she would have enjoyed as the next Miss Universe Canada.

Talackova claims she was unfairly dismissed from the pageant after organizers discovered that she was originally born male. And perhaps that is so. But we need not cast our pity over in her direction; I suspect she’ll do just fine. While the debacle may have exposed Talackova as “unfit” to compete against “natural” women, it has, to a far greater effect, uncovered the contradictions and backward thinking that riddles the contemporary Miss Universe industry.

There’s no question that Talackova, who began hormone therapy at the age of 14, was unique to the group competing for the Miss Universe Canada crown. Pageant organizers have released a statement saying Talackova, “did not meet the requirements to compete despite having stated otherwise on her entry form,” though they have not explicitly confirmed that she was disqualified for being male at birth. Talackova underwent sexual reassignment surgery in 2010 and is, by all accounts, female, though her gender at seemingly rendered her ineligible to compete on the same level as the other Miss Universe contestants.

Which, first off, raises the question of … why? If Talackova were competing in a weightlifting challenge or a high-jump competition or some other contest wherein being born male would offer some kind of a competitive edge, that would be one thing. But Miss Universe is a beauty competition. Going from Jack to Jill can’t possibly provide an advantage over the girls who aren’t injecting themselves with estrogen to keep the facial hair at bay.

Still, allegedly, in the eyes of the Miss Universe Canada administration, original gonads are a non-negotiable. Which, of course, elicits the question of what it means to be a “natural” woman. Would a girl born with MRHK Syndrome — that is, without a uterus, fallopian tubes and a structurally typical vagina — be prohibited from competing for Miss Universe Canada? What about a girl who fails to begin menstruation? And what degree of hermaphroditism at birth would be tolerated for a would-be contestant in her later years? I ask partly in jest, but these question do become relevant when a contestant, who believed herself female since the age of four, is disqualified for having had the wrong parts.

Why are we to believe Talackova is less a woman than her female-since-birth competitors, many of whom dye their hair, paint their nails, inject their lips, and plump up their breasts with silicone and saline? If Miss Universe Canada is going to insist that its contestants are “natural” women, it should, indeed, insist that its contestants are real women. Or at least provide some guidance as to how much surgical tweaking a woman can undergo before crossing the line from “natural woman” to “we wish her the best.”

Talackova’s dismissal also helps to highlight the baffling contradictions inherent in beauty pageant lore. While pageant organizers consistently try to legitimize competitions as more than skin-deep animals parades — through interview rounds, the expectation of charitable contributions, and the Miss Universe assessment that its women are “savvy, goal-oriented and aware” — the act of eliminating a contestant based entirely on skin-deep criterion proves that the emperor is strutting the stage buck naked.