Miss Universe has come round again. The swimsuit parade is tomorrow. That’s where the competitors – all conforming to unrealistic body types and the thin ideal – get to parade in a swimsuit just before they tell us their plans for world peace and saving starving brown babies.
Despite the fact that this whole thing is about looks over substance and a narrow standard of female beauty, organisers and participants still claim the competition is about ‘personality and intelligence’.
Miss Universe 2008 Laura Dundovic ran this argument on Channel 7’s Morning Show today (see below for video). I wasn’t exactly what you would call convinced, though I did love how she insisted on this as images of lingerie clad contestants flashed across the screen.
Miss Universe – and other pageants of their kind – promote a thin, hot, sexy body (as judged by prevailing beauty standards) as the only real valued quality of women.
Imagine a contestant who had not gone through a punishing beauty/diet/surgery/makeup/hair regime and didn’t fit the beauty pageant norm. But she has a sparkling and vibrant personality and scored ‘A’ for algebra and science all through her school years. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
If it’s abou t’personality and intelligence’, why couldn’t this be determined with the contestant in a three piece suit and not a barely-there piece of fabric across groin and breasts? Check out the ‘intelligence and personality’ of this past contestant below.
While the organisers of these pageants would claim to care about women’s rights, really such events promote body judging, body comparison and surveillance: none of which advance the status of women.
US-style pageants for teens and children have made their way to Australia unfortunately. Miss Teen Australia also has a swimwear competition. In this section, “marks scored will be based on the Presentation, Cut and Style of the fabric”. So it’s the fabric that is being judged? Then why not just hold it up for the judges to see? Is this an attempt to pretend it’s not really about how a teenage girl’s body looks in a bikini?
Judging women on their beauty has extended to judging even little girls on theirs. We’ve all seen the many scarifying images that show what happens when little girls are seen as mini adult women and forced to conform to an extreme and artificial norm of female attractiveness.
These pageants make it even harder for girls to be valued for qualities other than their physical appearance. Miss Bayside Australia includes a modelling section for children from 0-13.
Have a look at the impact on children in ‘Toddlers and Tiaras’
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14202757[/vimeo]
You can hear my thoughts on the subject on Channel 7’s Morning Show.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/14200266[/vimeo]
6 Responses
As you say, if it were really about the contestants’ personality & intelligence, then why insist on them parading around in bikinis?
If pageant organisers were to show any integrity they would scrap this part of the competition completely.
An.d i agree, it is a complete double standard when it comes to the sexualised photoshoots – no doubt a way for the pageant organisers to feign concern & a desire for change, without actually having to acknowledge the part their own pageants play in this sort of sexualisation, & the promotion of the narrow view of women as objects of lust, rather than people of substance.
If Miss Universe pageant really cares about ‘personality and intelligence’ then maybe they would do better to showcase women around the world who are fighting for…oh lets call it ‘world peace.’ These are the women who work for organisations like World Vision or Compassion. They are feeding children in poverty, helping trafficked women to escape prositution. Teaching trafficked women to write their own name as they have been stripped of their identity and robbed of an education. These are the women we should be ‘getting to know.’
The objectification of women through pageants is the same attitude that leads to trafficking. When women are objectified, their humanity is ignored – their feelings, their needs, their rights, their family, their past and their future. ‘Miss Universe’ needs to stop pretending it is anything other than a flesh fest.
Well said Melind a L – i wholeheartedly agree!
Good on you Melinda – I appreciate your work and the fact that you continue to speak out against the sexualisation and objectification of women and girls.
This seems like a thinly veiled excuse to photograph a bunch of beautiful young women with very little on. My guess is that the Miss Universe gig is a marketing machine that needs to sell the whole idea and they say “sex sells”.
The trouble is our children in their formative years are presented with an image that is missing something. These images are chosen because they are good to sell papers and advertising, but they can reinforce negative self image and values.
I hope the Miss Universe organisers reads this.
I have heard once that Miss Universe does do some good works, what about we have stories about these, help us to be inspired, give us hope and help our youth to be inspired to make the world a better palace please
Sadly while the only power women believe they have is youth and beauty, these ideas will continue to abound. And like that young girl, the parents of those poor little children and others will fight for it continuing to use the BS lines that it is really about intelligence and personality. I would feel way more accepting if they would call it as it is – a body and beauty contest.
Feeling beautiful as a woman is something that I think is really inside all of us, the problem is the ideal is so narrow, almost so impossible that it excludes many. We don’t see examples of the variety of expressions of beauty being celebrated in all its forms. We see just the one and now they are trying to convince us that you now have to conform to body and beauty ideals PLUS have brains and a personality and be saving the world….
Great job Melinda at consistantly bringing this topic to the fore.