Beauty pageants: Awesome or Awful? | By Shiksha Negi

"Comrades-comrades come along, let's choose the prettiest of them all- that young girl so thin and tall with lustrous hair, spotless skin is surely the best and will rise above the rest."

Today, there are a no. of platforms that can be used to evoke progression, and for creating breakthroughs one of these they say are pageants. These extremely glamorous beauty pageants have somehow managed to gain popularity since their centuries-old tradition and are holding their position of esteem even in 2020. Why have these pageants been so sought-after? One of the most important reasons is, they are said to provide a huge platform to the candidates to present themselves before the world, besides this, they generate employment for a section of the society thus enabling more job opportunities in the field of acting, business, etc. but for the good of a few can the harm it is doing by setting such unrealistic standards of beauty in the society be neglected? When these contests allure a large crowd and especially the youth it becomes all-important to know where these pageants are going wrong.

Perpetuating very high and specific standards of beauty

Participating in these contests one needs to be a certain type- predominantly young, lean, unmarried, and needless to say the height bar that has been set and what not! Veronika Didusenko, a model was stripped of the Miss Ukraine title in 2018 as the competition stipulates that entrants must be between the age group 17-25 years, unmarried and childless.

Are women who are married, have kids, or passed their early 20s not beautiful anymore? What actually happened to beauty being in the eyes of the beholder? These specifications make these contests lack diversity which in turn makes them of little value as being different and unique is one of the most beautiful things in this day and age when the majority believes in following trends rather than setting it.

Starting from fake tans, fake eyelashes, caked-on makeup to glitzy gowns everything looks too unreal to be called beautiful. All this sets very high standards and gives an idea of this false beauty, something that hardly anybody can maintain nor would want to because there is so much value beyond how you look. Titles like “Miss flawless skin”, “Miss Curvy” and many more seem like spelling out how one’s every feature should look like. People who argue that beauty contests empower women or men should understand that there’s nothing empowering about fitting in parameters that limits the different kinds of beauty you can be.

Negative Impact of pageants on the mindset of the people

“No object is so beautiful that, under certain conditions, it will not look ugly. ”

-Oscar Wilde

Watching contestants on such beauty pageants, many people feel bad about themselves that they don’t look like these people or are unable to satisfy these standards, hardly anyone on this planet looks like these people, in fact, they themselves don't look like them, most of the time but we youngsters time and again get beguiled by these entrancing ideas and tend to make comparisons. They promote unhealthy eating habits, girls participating in these pageants literally starve themselves to fit into those size zero dresses thus leading to eating disorders and poor health, as argued by many that such contests boost up your self-confidence of course to the three girls with tiras it becomes a joy to behold but for the rest, all this is a cause of many serious mental and physical health problems. 

Not just this, these contests unknowingly divide people into classes or catalyze classism, it’s a well-known fact that participating in such contests can cost you an arm and a leg to meet the requirements. Hiring high-priced personal trainers, nutritionists, designers, having expensive skin-care routines, high expenditure on extravagant outfits is something which is not possible for everyone to afford, people who don’t have the wherewithal to these luxuries often wonder if beauty is meant only for the rich since the natural and inner beauty of someone is seldom appreciated at these platforms.                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Arguments advocated by these pageants that they give equal importance to beauty and brain isn't satisfactory at all. It looks like they are just trying to justify why they consider beauty. The intellect of a person doesn't need any beauty to strengthen it, it can stand alone. There is absolutely no compulsion of having beauty with the brain. Obviously, appreciating beauty is not a problem but one should not be given a credit for it.

The popularity of these pageants leads to the initiation of child beauty pageants which are even worse. Unlike adults, kids don’t have the sagacity to decipher what’s good and what’s wrong for them nor are they able to separate the competition from reality, which can make participation even more damaging to their self-esteem. So ultimately these child pageants become more about parents than the child. Participating in such competition deprives the children of their childhood and makes them eager to grow up. This urgency can make them imitate the habits of adults and act inappropriately for their age. These children grow up with the misconception that the only way to be successful is to be beautiful. American reality shows Toddlers and Tiaras faced much scrutiny surrounding the sexualization of young girls, making it a lightning rod for criticism from many angry viewers and concerned parents. Giving an unrealistic perspective on women to little girls shouldn't be acceptable at all, France has actually banned child beauty pageants because it sexualizes children in a very disturbing way.

Conclusion

These beauty contests should not be given much attention, they are only for entertainment purposes and are just a way for the big business houses, organizers, make-up brands to make big bucks. It distracts the youth from bigger goals and aspirations. It’s very sad that even today we are still limiting and holding beauty in these weird, archaic rituals. This should change, we all just need to start somewhere, and sometime, maybe now should be a good time to do away with these unrealistic standards of beauty.

*Author is a Second-year student of B.A.LL.B (Hons.) at Law School, BHU