Debating beauty contests
When I asked my p.a. if there was office on Monday , not yet sure, ma’m. It might be a special holiday because of the Miss Universe Contest. I am personally against beauty contests but aghast angry if it is made a national special holiday.
In the debate I am not for beauty contests. These are more than harmful. Here are some of the reasons they give.
“Beauty contests promote an ideal of female beauty to which only a minority of women can realistically aspire, but which adds to the pressure on all women to conform to it. This can be harmful to women by encouraging dieting, eating disorders and cosmetic surgery, or simply by making them feel inadequate and ugly.
Those who are on the side of beauty contests say yes to beauty contests. “People enjoy beauty contests. Many women enjoy entering them. Many people enjoy watching them. Nobody is forced to do either. The beauty of a fit, healthy, well-proportioned human form is something from which we can all take pleasure, and beauty contests, along with other forms of art, are vehicles which enable us to do so.”
There are other factors to consider. “Judging women, but not men, primarily on their looks contributes to the subjugation of women because other qualities, such as intelligence, are not seen as part of ideal femininity and therefore not as things to which women should aspire.
Ideal masculinity, while in itself potentially damaging to men, tends to be construed in much wider and less restrictive terms – it is notable that male beauty contests, judging men on their physical appearance, have not been successful.
They also argue that the image of female beauty promoted by beauty contests do not consider traits that specific to the culture they represent. The image of female beauty promoted by beauty contests is peculiarly western.
No matter how many Asian women win Miss World If a contestant would refuse to take part in the swimsuit competition they will not qualify. They can only do so if they take part in the swimsuit competition. There are cultures that consider women parading in their swimsuits as inappropriate dress in their culture.
There were demonstrations against Miss World by feminists and Hindu nationalists when it was held in Bangalore in 1996. Riots in Kaduna in northern Nigeria over Miss World 2002 left more than 200 dead and led to the contest being moved to London.
It becomes even more challenging to intelligent women who argue against beauty contests. It encourages harmful political attitudes to women.
“Despite paying lip-service to feminist keywords such as empowerment and self-confidence, they do nothing concrete to aid the liberation of women; indeed, by reinforcing looks as the most important feminine quality, they harm women’s liberation in general.
The fact that the organizers of Miss World 2002 had no problem with holding the contest in Nigeria at the same time as a high-profile case in which a woman was due to be stoned for adultery exposes the competition’s hypocrisy; it was only relocated after rioting made it unsafe to hold it in Nigeria.”
Here in the Philippines the most famous beauty queen is none other than the former first lady – Imelda Marcos. The rules of the Miss Manila contest was that the candidate who had the biggest number of votes wins. But she had cried pleading with the mayor. The result was there were two Miss Manila winners, one who cried and another who won the most number of votes. She would later gain more than the title of Miss Manila. She became the partner of the “Marcos conjugal dictatorship.”
Today women are doing more than just making fun of beauty contests. They are marching against being subjugated by men. It is worth noting that in 2015 the most awkward happened. The host, Steve Harvey named the wrong winner on live television. Women are made to parade around in bikinis for the honor of winning a sash and tiara. That’s the true embarrassment.
“Harvey couldn’t distinguish one pretty woman for another is almost poetic, because in pageants like Miss Universe, Miss America and Miss USA, women aren’t individuals anyway. They’re literal symbols – unnamed besides the state or country they’re there to represent. It’s the ultimate display of women as interchangeable, vying for the right to be the shiniest object in the room.
The contests are an antiquated reminder of exactly what we don’t want for women, and they should have no place in our future.”
Guess who is the co-owner of Miss USA – Donald Trump – who is now the president of the United States. Millions of women around the world are protesting his policies on women.
It just demonstrates that “despite the progress women have made over the years, there are still plenty of reminders of how far we still have to go. And feminists are still fighting against some of the same big issues – like the wage gap and sexual violence – that they were decades ago.”
I just got a call from my p.a., the committee meeting on Monday has been cancelled. Yipee.
A concerned woman said rightly “we cannot seem to figure out a way just to do away with something as obviously misogynist and retrograde as beauty pageants.”