International and local beauty pageants is a very popular and, obviously, profitable kind of show business, which is extremely spread worldwide, especially after the Second World War. Every year in different parts of the world over a hundred local, regional, national, international competitions of beauty are held. This essay will reveal some major pros and cons of beauty pageants, on focusing on its negative side. The beauty pageant is a so called expression of the ‘women power’, even though it has both positive and negative sides.
Divisive, subversive and provocative role of popular international show beautiful women clearly demonstrates compiled list a few years ago sovereign countries and partially recognized state entities that are considered as potential participants in the contest Miss Europe. Among them appear Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, Nagorno-Karabakh, Northern Cyprus, Kosovo. It is not surprising that separatists in different countries are trying to use international beauty contests for establishing in the minds of the international community, at least at the psychological level! These competitions for them are the means of obtaining international recognition at the diplomatic level in the future, without which full sovereignty over its territory, which they aspire, is impossible.
The history of international beauty contests replete with examples of their usage in order to demonstrate the centrifugal tendencies - from the collapse of the colonial system and up to this day. One can mention, in particular, apart speeches of representatives of parts of mainland Britain - Scotland, Wales, England, to a lesser extent - Northern Ireland on all popular international beauty pageants, which correlated with the activity of the powerful separatist movements in these regions that have put the country on the brink of collapse. Incidentally, Scotland and Wales also go in tandem with a separate sports teams involving these areas in international competitions in rugby and football. This fact of sporting life UK, according to some researchers, is an important factor in preserving national awareness of these regions of the United Kingdom. No doubt the same role is played by separate performances of the British state in the world beauties competitions.
Politicians and statesmen clearly understand the importance of beauty contests, which helps to gain international recognition of separatist movements and public entities. In particular, Jonathan Kolieb, who is the representative of the “Century Foundation”, World-renowned promoter of liberal political reforms, claimed that Kosovo at the contest Miss Universe 2008 received a moral victory and occupied its rightful place in the community of nations of the world. “Miss Kosovo was an instant crowd favorite, and the judges agreed – putting her through to the Top 10 finalists – a fantastic feat for a first-time participating country and visibly nervous contestant. If further proof was required that Kosovo had indeed come out from behind Serbia’s shadow, Miss Kosovo easily trounced all her Cross-Balkan rivals including Miss Serbia” (Muir, 2008). Therefore, sovereign country whose regions or ethnic territory independently participate in international competitions of beauties, trying every way this anti act, well aware that their components out on the world stage as independent subjects of international activities can be a form of early or of separatism.
There is also very important nuance of racial issue. It is known that African American had not been attractive in the terms of sexuality and beauty in the case of their social status. However, such tendentious started to brake after World War II, because of development of different social institute as well as an understanding of human attracting. “The example of different examples of successful winners provides an interesting connection with larger cultural trends that were underway during this period. In particular, this was representative of the beginning acceptance of African-American women as attractive in broader U.S. culture” (Patnode, 2012). So it can be emphasized as advantage of Beauty Pageants in terms of development of racial issue solving.
The main positive aspect carried by beauty contests is that they reveal the true talents and give them the opportunity to acquire fame, by quickly join the cohort of show business. Moreover, beauty pageants reveal woman solidarity on a significant level. “In this way, then, we see that the social advancement of “beautiful and intelligent” Filipino women is in fact supported by the labor of other women—and that the country’s high gender equality rankings are most seemingly accompanied by a gross disparity that exists between women themselves” (Suzuki, 2012).
Although it has been stated, that the competition values natural beauty, some of the participants were generously upgraded in various ways. Faked hair, nails, teeth and tan are the most harmless of these improvements. Some could even be tended to make surgeries. Height and age are important too, which creates physical inequality and ageism. Natural inequality is primarily a biological division of people by age and sex; Further it is inherent differences of people from the physical data: the growth, strength, endurance, hair color, eye and on the personal qualities – such as temperament, intelligence, determination, strength, motivation, internal energy and so on.
Nature has given different values to each person: one is better by force, the other – by the mind, the third - the beauty, but someone had inherited intractable disease and destined as permanently disabled. Social differences are generated by such social factors as the social division of labor (workers mental and physical labor); way of life, social roles, etc. If social differences are imposed on the natural, then strong, with appropriate training can become an athlete, an Olympic champion, the smart - an academician, and a beautiful girl winning a beauty contest - will be the top model. All of them will have unequal access to social benefits and will occupy a high position in society compared to less gifted fellow citizens. Thus, the natural inequality is the first form of inequality, which often develops in the second, the highest form - social inequality. The latter is inextricably associated with social differences, known as social differentiation. “Beauty practices act as a means for the social control of the female body within patriarchy. As Naomi Wolf, perhaps the best-known critic, put it: the beauty myth is “the last best belief system that keeps male dominance intact” (Edmonds, 2008).
One of the most terrible aspects of beauty pageants is its child version, where moms force their young girl present their sexuality before adult auditory through artificial methods. “Entering young women into child beauty pageants is wrong. This is a serious issue because many parents are compromising their daughter’s physical and mental health for the title of Miss. Supreme Queen. The show “Toddlers in Tiaras” depicts moms so desperate for their children to win that they force them to receive UV or spray tans, bikini waxes, and even Botox injections. Most of the girls featured on the show are under six years old” ("Physical Problems", n.d.). However, today, this problem is not enough indicated as pop cultural issue that can cause different psychological deviation in growing up girls.
There also a lot of critics from the non-Western world, especially Africa and Indo China, where people trying to save their national and cultural features. Usually, their statements have following form. “Critics of beauty pageants in developing and non-western countries offer varied arguments in opposition to the competitions, arguments that reflect constructions of ideal femininity, nationalism, and morality, as well as the struggle of developing countries for global visibility” (Crawford et al., 2008). This is also important problem of world institute of beauty, since until the second half of twentieth century, only western view of woman beauty was popular at the world scale. However, in today terms of globalization, such views can be accepted and it is quite natural that the image of beauty woman can be significantly transformed in the future. It is also needed to mentioned about using girls from the beauty pageant as a pop cultural goods, especially in context of advertising. “These kinds of events in most part of the world has been the target of opposition, controversy, and resistance by forces such as political associations (All Nepal Women’s Association (Revolutionary), feminist groups, and women rights activists who see these programs of beauty industry as vulgar, indecent, and degrading to women. They seriously oppose the commodification and exploitation of participating women at the hands of organizers and sponsors” ("controversy – Sujen Man Blog", 2010).
Social psychology has brought a lot of important terms into the sphere of analysis of social interactions. One of these important terms is self-esteem, which could be downgraded thanks to beauty pageants. From social values it is necessary to distinguish the self-assessment and self-esteem. Self-assessment is an element of self-consciousness, which states in the correlation or comparison of personal qualities, abilities, social status, success, attractiveness, moral character with the qualities of others. So it becomes obvious that the self-assessment is the comparison with others. In order to study self-assessment one could use the subjective evaluation with the list of questions, where the middle of the scale would be the answer “like others”. However, this is only subjective scale, so usually, subjective rating scale is mixed up with the objective one, hence how people evaluate others, not only themselves. That is why one could study self-esteem from ‘others’’ point of view. This becomes even tougher in case of defining the most beautiful candidate, since even every person has one’s own subjective point of view. “Selfesteem is a core identity issue, essential to personal validation and our ability to experience joy. Once achieved, it comes from the inside out. A woman with low self-esteem does not feel good about herself because she has absorbed negative messages about women from the culture and/or relationships. Consequently, women find themselves in a cultural stew that promotes sexualization of women and competition among themselves” (Eliminating Racism Empowering Women, 2008).
Finally, it is also necessary to mention the role of the beauty from philosophical point of view. Art brings a sense of beauty for the individual. For instance, one can learn to see the beauty of the world, not only in the midst of nature, but also by enjoying the art. It enriches his inner world, by making his soul good and more humane. However, the problem is in the fact that not everyone believes that the beauty pageants are indeed the symbol of real beauty. In fact, the works of art help mankind to understand how beautiful can a person be, if the thoughts and actions are noble and pure. The beauty pageants, in contrast, are not the symbol of pureness, since all of the models are adorned with make up, feeling of hate to each other and the beauty just dissipates within this terrible competition. One could mention Plato’s idea about the beauty in order to make the statements about the beauty more clear. Considering the wonderful things (beautiful girl, a beautiful horse, a beautiful vase), Plato concludes that the beauty is not contained in them. Beautiful, indeed, is only the idea, so it is absolute and is located in the world of ideas. It is possible to get closer to understanding the idea of beauty by reaching a number of stages: review beautiful bodies, by admiring the beautiful souls (Plato rightly shows that beauty is not only sensible, but also a spiritual phenomenon); In fact, in the beauty pageants it is impossible to understand the soul, since this it is only a show. Admiring the beautiful thoughts, the ability to see the beautiful abstraction, which are also essential, completes the ideal beauty of the world, in fact the idea of beauty. The true comprehension of beauty is possible thanks to the mind; intellectual contemplation is a kind of extrasensory experience, which is absent in beauty pageants.
For girls with the desire and natural gifts, beauty contest is a great chance to start a career as a model or just to become famous. Finally, one could underline three major disadvantages of the beauty pageants. Those are political issue, physical inequality and self-esteem decrease after the contest. However, there are no racism inequalities nowadays, even though it took many years to get rid of that. One more positive aspect is associated with the fact that the winner of the beauty competition will receive upheaval of self-esteem.
References
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Muir, D. (2008). Miss Kosovo | A Fistful Of Euros. Fistfulofeuros.net. Retrieved 27 March 2016.
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