In Defence of the Beauty Pageant

I like beauty pageants. Partially coming from a South American background (where such events are akin to national holidays), I remember sitting in the living room as a child, surrounded by extended family, watching the Miss Universe pageant as my aunts and uncles cheered with outstanding patriotism for ‘their’ girls, and jeered at all the rest in a terrifying and almost demonic frenzy. The shouting, embracing, cursing and hissing created an atmosphere not unlike the ones you see at soccer matches, and if you’ve ever watched a bunch of impassioned Chilenos at a soccer match, you’ve probably witnessed blood spill under choruses of war cries, all of course in the name of frivolous competition. But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? Getting excited for the sake of excitement, whether or not as a fully conscious decision, summoning all of that diabolical nationalism you never knew you had and making bold declarations about how your country inhabits the most beautiful women in the world.

The excitement however is not shared by all, as year after year the annual Miss Universe pageant meets with a storm of feminist criticism, condemning the beauty contest as a sexist display of female objectification and exploitation, comparable even to pornography. The idea of women parading around in bikinis doesn’t sit well with the many vigorous campaigners, but is this really the quintessence of the competition? What do these attitudes actually reveal about the modern, self-proclaimed ‘feminist’?

The chronic need for many activists to pathologise society’s obsession with beauty demonstrates the common habit of labelling beauty and sexuality as antitheses of feminism. Women should not be sexualised or judged by their looks, otherwise, as so gracefully demonstrated by a group of female university students in London, they are to be attacked with stink-bombs and made to listen to the poetic, feminist taunting, “Ain’t she sweet; making profits off her meat.” The argument that apparently justifies such hostile reactions is that beauty pageants contribute to the sexual objectification of women in the same way that pornography does, but surely comparing beauty pageant contestants to porn stars seems slightly exaggerated? The quick strut in a regular two-piece bikini is definitely sexy, but not explicitly sexualised. It is also important to consider the fact that even though there is little doubt that the primary focus of international beauty pageants is, in fact, beauty, it is never valued in isolation. Participants are required to be ambitious, intelligent, charitable and interesting women. In other words, they are all required to possess a personality, and a pretty admirable one at that.

Banet-Weiser writes, “Beauty pageants, rather than operating as simple showcases for displaying objectified bodies, are actually a kind of feminist space where female identity is constructed by negotiating the contradictions of being socially constituted as ‘just’ a body while simultaneously producing oneself as an active thinking subject, indeed, a decidedly ‘liberal’ subject. . .The notion of being an actor in the world, of both existing as a body and transcending that body, is the relentless theme of beauty pageants[1]”. The argument of sexual objectification therefore appears to try and pervert the idea of beauty and to demonise the celebration of it, guilting spectators into feeling like misogynistic oglers. The majority of the women who compete represent everything that the typical feminist praises; they are educated, independent and self-assured, but they are also ostensibly beautiful and sexy, qualities of which apparently ensure the swift disqualification from feminist ideals.

International spectacles like the Miss Universe pageant also offer something more to its audiences. Demonstrated in the crazed enthusiasm of my beloved aunts and uncles, the beauty pageant largely exists to express ideals of nationhood. More than ten years ago, Banet-Weiser introduced the idea that the beauty pageant contestant embodied a national ideal of citizenship more than anything else, promoting the practices and norms of self-discipline that enable the existence of the nation. Before Miss Universe, the festivals of the medieval world paraded festival queens to invoke civic pride and affirm community values. Banet-Weiser compares this to the pageant today, in which participants are explicitly modelled as good citizens, working in volunteerism and community projects and demonstrating their faith in the youth of their countries. The politics of the beauty pageant cannot be denied, as participants are celebrated as ideal ambassadors of their countries, particularly in terms of youth and the future.

Employing the feminine body as representatives of the good of a nation has played a powerful role in the long history of global beauty pageants, so how does Australia fare? Admittedly, we aren’t big on such events, briefly airing the Miss Universe spectacle on prime time television only after ‘our Jen’ took the 2004 title, but our selection of participants reveal something peculiar about our culture and identity. For one, while many countries have traditional national costumes for women, the masco-centric culture of Australia leaves very little for Aussie designers to work with, as demonstrated by the most recent Miss Australia’s national costume which, paired up with high-heeled Ugg boots, had been deemed as a national joke. We have the Anzac, the Digger, the Lifesaver and the Larrikin, but where do women fit into the equation?

The 2006 Australian contestant, Erin McNaught, even resorted to dressing as an actual bushman, equipped with the masculine, bushman’s swagger. Diverse inclusiveness seems to also be lacking in Australia’s selection of participants, despite our claims of tolerance and multiculturalism. While the United States have selected African Americans, a contestant with a disability and more recently, an Islamic contestant, Australia continues to choose the same bronzed and Anglo women to represent the nation. Despite this, and perhaps I am being too optimistic, I’m fairly confident that we’ll see more positive changes in the near future, just as I hope women will begin rescripting their bitter attitudes concerning the beauty pageant, and understand it from a less sinister perspective.

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