Miss America to end competition's swimsuit segment

New York, June 5 (IANS) In a bid to end sexism, the Miss America beauty pageant's organizers on Tuesday announced they will scrap the bikini segment from this year's edition, a media report said.

"We are not going to judge you on your outward appearance," Gretchen Carlson, a former Fox News anchor who is now the organization's chairwoman, said on ABC's "Good Morning America", reported the New York Times. 

"We want more women to know that they are welcome in this organization."

While the Miss America Organization had long defended the segment where women posed in skimpy swimsuits as a measure of the women's physical fitness, it has now decided to remove it in wake of a harassment scandal it faces and in view of the #MeToo movement.

Carlson said the competition would focus more on the contestants' talents, intelligence and ideas.