Affirmative Action in Beauty Pageants?

You've got to be kidding me!  I've been seeing commentaries all over the place about a post by Daniel Pipes (I'm not going to link to it directly, because Pipes is an idiot) about Rima Fakih winning the "Miss U.S.A" title, including this one from David Weigel at WaPo, all centering on  this comment by Pipes:

They are all attractive, but this surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants makes me suspect an odd form of affirmative action.

I clenched my teeth and went to Pipes' post.  He's noting five Muslim women who have won beauty pageants in the U.S., England and France in the past five years.  Assuming these are annual events, that means that out of fifteen possible winners, five were Muslim.  (He includes pictures of the winners, and they are all, indeed, attractive.)

Without getting into a whole thing about our changing concept of beauty (remember when Barbra Streisand hit the scene, nose and all?  And how shocked people were that she was actually gorgeous?), let me just point out one thing:  it's sad to see people whose racism is so ingrained that they aren't even aware of it.  (Think Progress has a summary of the right-wing freakouts.)

I think there's one very obvious reason she won:

She's magnificent -- and that's me saying that. If she were a guy, I'd be slobbering all over my keyboard.

Second thoughts:  I am going to link to Pipes' post so you can see him falling all over himself to cover his ass now that the firestorm has started.  I'm not convinced.