Beauty Pageants

Last weekend, my mom, Dr. Susan Evangelista, won an award for being an outstanding mother and woman in the Puerto Princesa community. The award was organized by Junior Chamber International (JCI) Oil and was part of a larger Mother’s Day celebration organized by NCCC Department Store. She was asked to be there at 2:45 pm as the awarding would take place at 3 as an intermission to a beauty pageant called Ms. Mommyverse. We arrived at 2:45 pm and unsurprisingly, the pageant was running late, so we settled into our seats and watched eight of the 14 candidates’ talent portion presentations. Of the eight candidates we watched, one sang a song. One did a comedy dance in which she made herself look pregnant and used makeup to give herself black teeth and freckles then danced around the stage basically making fun of herself. A third candidate put a bag over her head and danced around the stage (we didn’t fully understand this one). The other five contestants we caught all did the same thing: they came onto the stage mostly dressed, then started stripping away layers of clothes to reveal bikinis and then started dancing provocatively. Some did dances that were similar to belly dancing. But most of the dances utilized modern dance steps that involved a lot of hip and butt thrusting. There weren’t very many people in the audience but the people who were there reacted enthusiastically with cheering and whistling. Everyone seemed to be having a good time. As I watched, I kept thinking to myself, “how is it that Pinoys describe themselves as conservative when displays like this are totally commonplace, accepted and even celebrated?” Switch on any Pinoy noontime show and you’ll find similar performances (although with likely better dancers and costumes). Many Filipinos have no problem with scantily-clad women and even young girls performing sexy dances on stage. There are usually many children in the live audience and also watching along at home. And although many parents take no issue with performances like these, when it comes to talking to their children about sex, they balk and say talking about sex will encourage the kids to have sex. I recently saw a cartoon shared on Facebook that showed a woman praising her daughter when she was dancing suggestively as a three-year-old, then buying her skimpy clothes when she seemed to be about 12, and then in the last box, when her 17-year-old

daughter is visibly pregnant, pulling out her hair and asking, “Where did I go wrong?”. While I don’t think that dancing and one’s clothes make someone more likely to get pregnant, I do think that parents have a responsibility for what they expose their kids to. I do not think it is healthy for children to grow up watching half-naked women dance suggestively for prizes or money. I do think it is healthy to talk to kids about what is appropriate and what isn’t. I do think it is healthy to teach kids about their bodies and their health and how pregnancy happens and what a healthy relationship looks like, and how to detect abuse and stand up to peer pressure. If Filipinos who are up in arms against comprehensive sexuality education really believe that learning about sexuality will make kids have sex, then why do they turn a blind eye to all the glaring sexualization and objectification of women? Do they think that seeing these things and accepting them as normal will have no effect on a girl and how she grows up thinking about herself and her value? Or has it become so normal that they don’t even notice? My whole family came to cheer my mom on when she got her award and my mom told me she was glad that my husband took our kids to play while we sat through the talent portions. While I am happy for my kids to grow up enjoying music and dancing, I don’t want them to see sexualized, half-naked women gyrating on stage and to think that this is normal, or worse, to aspire to that themselves.