BEAUTY PAGEANTS.....DO WE REALLY NEED THEM?

A beauty pageant is a public competition for young women in which their appearances and sometimes other qualities which incorporate personality, talent and answers are compared and judged.

It is assumable that beauty pageants will never wane in popularity as more than two billion people watch them on television and the internet every year. The various titles, faces and stakeholders may change but the pageant has and will always be here.

Since beauty standards differentiate by latitude and longitude, there is no definite way of crowning the most classic of all contestants. A selected number of individuals are chosen to properly identify the ultimate beauty queen by the maximum vote. Even this is insufficient as votes can be bought and paid for one way or the other and so obviously, the method used is voting and a rating scale by the judges.

The voting method has been adopted because of the judgmental nature of our society. Even governments and legal systems and most other civil mechanisms are controlled by

Voting since it is one easy way to find out what the general consensus is. Actually it has become the preferred way of determining the winner.

Most of us will normally vote based on personal opinion examples of which are voting for a candidate because she hails from our sub region, complexion, bears a nice name and what have you until we encounter some type of directive. Guidelines like "we are looking for a fit model with an attractive and healthy body type that is appealing to western marketing standards for beauty as defined by x model magazine, x television show or x advertiser", etc constitute directives.

Contestants gain many personal, community and social rewards that make pageants worthwhile. It is argued that the show gives the participants self confidence and help them learn public speaking and also to do drama in school without fear. It is also argued that they let the lady in you shine which can lead you into bigger and better pageants.

Also, they make you aware of how to properly walk and carry your body in the correct manner there is. Competitions of this nature are good for the morale because they are a good form of expression and it’s a fun way of meeting new people. It also builds confidence in young women.

Although some competitions have components that are not based purely on physical appearance, unattractive contestants are unlikely to win, no matter how talented, poised, intelligent, educated, resourceful or socially conscious they are. It is the glamour models or contestants that enjoy success because they have very beautiful faces, swell lips and shiny hair as well as beautiful and smooth bodies, usually the curvy but not the fat type.

Notwithstanding the above points however, the pageant show is doing more harm than good and has raised a lot of criticisms over the years calling for its ban by the powers that be through well analyzed and critical policies. Below are some of the points that I have enumerated to support the view of the critics.

Firstly, rather than providing women with opportunities, it can be argued that beauty contests hurt the prospects of women who do not fit the current cultural ideal of beauty, because these contests promote the idea that those who fit this ideal are “better” than those who do not.

Secondly, some pageants require a swimsuit for a portion of the competition, which emphasizes the physical bodies of women, some claim in undressed state and this is encouraging sexualization of young girls. And so it is being argued, however, that women who do not excel in other fields may at least have a chance to win a beauty contest.

Thirdly young girls who sit at home and watch the pageants believe that they are not pretty enough, skinny enough or whatever to be in the pageant. It is also bad for other peoples self esteem. Young girls at home begin to think they have to be sexy to get far in life which is totally wrong. Are the organizers suggesting that intelligence or real skills are not important in life?

To conclude with, such contests reinforce the idea which is usually wrong though that women should be valued primarily for their physical appearance, and that this puts tremendous pressure on women to be beautiful by spending time and money on fashion, cosmetics, hair styling and even cosmetic surgery. This pursuit of physical beauty even encourages some women to diet to the point of harming themselves because most go in the contest only focused on self-image and nothing else and this trend can be misleading to young girls who are our future mothers.

Interestingly, these contests are sponsored by corporate giants who invest hugely into them as part of their corporate social responsibility. If these corporate giants who are bent on injecting back into the society from which they took , then the base of their gesture should be so broad to help a lot of people by building classrooms, recreational parks in communities, instituting scholarship schemes and pursuing other developmental agendas. Not only to wake up one day to hear that another ridiculous girl who probably never got the chance to realize that there was something else on top of her shoulders besides a pretty face has been given a brand new car, a mansion and all the goodies that comes with it when school children are still lying prostrate on their bellies to study, when communities don’t even have clean water to drink.

To conclude, I am reiterating that beauty contests causes people to feel that they have to look a certain way and be a certain way to be considered beautiful. These contests are a complete distortion of beauty.

I do not care how pretty a person is, if they have no personality, self respect to project, if they have nothing to stand for apart from their pretty face. Simple as that…..ha!!!