Beauty Pageants

16 December 2012

There is something about beauty pageants that is intriguing for me. From my logical side, I realized that beauty pageants somehow present women as commodities, designed to out the other women off the competition and to garner most of audiences’ approval, much like the commercialization of women.

I can’t help but remember as well my childhood fascination for beauty pageants. I would be inspired to play act being each of the 12 candidates. I was trying out the Calendar Girl competition then on a noontime show. Then I would purposely cause one candidate to be the perfect one, standing out from the rest as the unanimous winner. I would even swathe myself with blankets as part of the costume and walk in tiptoes, as if in heels through our mattress. Such is the disparity between the fantasizing me from the cynical me. But how do I really see beauty pageants?

It is akin to displaying true people as superwomen, intact with grace and dignity under pressure. I already know now as an adult that it is difficult for a person under pressure to not appear so. In one of my application interviews, the research associate asked me how my previous job was. I said, “It was fun.” He told me my face doesn’t agree with my statement because my face says I was not having fun. I would fare bad in beauty pageants. My face reveals too much of my emotions than I can control. Sometimes I want to be like those anime heroes who though they are stressed appear cool. I know they manage that because they are in ink, not actual flesh and blood.

As a candidate, a woman would have to be in touch with her true self. She has to find her own beauty, seeing herself as beautiful first and exuding that acceptance of personal beauty towards all viewers. Then they are trained to be poised, of projection and proper posture. The rigors of thinking if you’ve done it right while assuaging the tumult of nerves and appearing otherwise is deadly. But those pageant contestants managed. They fix up and present themselves as a total package, usually projecting themselves as better than they actually are or as someone they want to be.

No wonder real women who are not into joining pageants run off from being a candidate. You pry yourself open for admiration at the risks of the cruel and vulgar scrutiny of the public. How you look, that is, you are expected to be a perfect Eve, flawless complexion, right amount of curves, captivating face. Everything in the candidate should be free from any attack of criticism physically. So they change how you look, straighten or curl out your hair, shave off completely or maybe outline your brows, cover up all your face with make-up until you do not look like yourself at all. Then they urge you to exercise so your body looks fantastic and depilate all of your hair in unwanted places. You show off all of yourself - not your real self, but your trained to win self to get the crown. And just like basketball where it is advised to give a ball for each player to stop the ruckus, why don’t they all just buy crowns for themselves to save them from all burdens? *Sigh* of course it doesn’t matter to them if they get a crown if they did not earn it together with merit.

I still admire women who vie for beauty titles. They really want to be proclaimed as the winner among all other contestants maybe because it would mean they could handle pressure and remain graceful and beautiful in appearance or simply because they can beat other beautiful women or they believe that they can measure up to the requirements of a beauty queen. No matter how much I speculate about how superficial or how self-fulfilling, demeaning or how the candidates become able to outdo or out limit themselves and develop, or farcical by not being themselves to win a title among other competitors, I will surely still be interested in watching women in casual wear, swimwear or evening gowns strutting through the stage and answering in a pinch any question hurled at them. Partly because I still can’t decide on whether it is moral or distorted and mainly because I remain in awe of how beautiful women really take efforts to be named the most beautiful by others, much like Snow White’s stepmother.