Beauty Pageants: What Do They Really Mean
While channel flipping I found out that NBC was having a live broadcast of 2006 Miss Universe contest from our very own
Los Angeles
. You must think that I am some cave person who never reads newspapers or listens to the news to miss this. The fact is, none of my local newspapers wrote about it and my local news channels didn’t talk about it. It didn’t matter if it was being held in US; the local media coverage was next to none. Same thing is happening with Miss and other state level beauty pageants, people are losing interest and still we have to have this ritual every year. Makes me question why?
Beauty pageants, in my view, are a convenient way for cosmetics companies, dress designers and event management professionals to show their talent and gain some coverage, without paying for it dearly. It has got nothing to do with beauty and yes, nothing to do with talent of the women participating in it. I commend the efforts of the pageant organizers world wide, who have successfully presented them as “scholarship programs” or “talent programs”. Many young women have believed them and see no harm in presenting themselves semi-nude in front of millions of people.
Yes, everyone has right to decide what is right for them. I have no problem when young women take part in beauty pageants, it’s their decision. If they think that being beautiful is being of certain height, certain, weight, certain age then let them think that way. But I do get irritated when girls, as young as three or four are taken to these kids pageants by their parents in a hope that one their daughters will become stars. I have a problem with four year old girls wearing makeup and dancing on stage like some giddy starlet. I see this as way to insure that the there are enough brain washed women to carry on the legacy.
These kids taking part in pageants are made to think that they are beautiful only if they fit into certain criteria, certain measurements. They carry this principle as they grow up; failing to understand that beauty is not a commodity you define by numbers. So, there you have secured the future of beauty pageants.
The other thing that bothers me about these pageants is that they tout themselves as talent programs, as scholarship programs. Give me a break!! Here is the criteria to enter Miss Indiana 2007, “If you are single (never married), never given birth to or have adopted a child, a United States citizen, a resident of the state of Indiana, and you are at least 18 but under 27 as of February 1, 2007, you are eligible to apply to become an entrant.”(Miss Indiana official website). You are telling me that a woman who has a child or who is over 28 is not beautiful? Only single women under 27 without a child are talented?? And please don’t get me started on the swimsuit round.
As I have said earlier, I have no problems with beauty pageants and with women who take part in it. But to say that they are a way for women to show their talent, that they are a scholarship program to benefit women it is just plan wrong. The organizers have to make their commercial motives clear and yes, stop dragging kids into this.
