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Daniel Louis S Castillo Professor Raymond Falgui Eng 10 10 October 2013 How Beauty Pageants Degrade Women Just recently, Megan Young, the representative of the Philippines in the Miss World pageant held in Bali, Indonesia, was crowned Miss World 2013. While for the past three years, Filipino representatives in the Miss Universe pageant consistently took a spot in the top five. The Philippines is, indeed, in a winning spree in international beauty pageants. Beauty pageants are popular in most parts of the world, however there have been some arguments that beauty pageants are degrading to women. These women are not the pageant contestants themselves, but women who lead lives not related to beauty pageantsemployees, students, workers, etc. Let us first take a look on how beauty queens win beauty pageants. It is a general knowledge that contestants in beauty pageants are judged according to their beauty, intelligence, and poise. However, Scott Lazerson, a 2011 Miss Universe judge, answered in an interview by Forbes, Beauty, beauty, beauty. Its all about beauty, when he was asked about what he was looking for and judging on the Miss Universe contestants. This implies that women are objectified in these contests. Their overall attractiveness is gauged by a panel of judges which makes the audience and most of the society that the self worth of women is linked to their physical attractiveness. Winning a pageant is not like winning basketball or chess. It is not

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arbitrary. Even if there is this Question and Answer portion of the competition which is known to be the basis for their intelligence, the contestants try to focus on this part the least since they are primarily judged on their looks and figure. The criteria for judging these pageant contestants have an effect on how women look themselves and uphold women to an almost impossible standard of beauty. Most of these contestants have perfect, if not, skinny bodies. Women, especially teenagers, would die just to have those perfect bodies, and these contests encourage them to do so. A lot of teenage girls resort to some extreme measures that may even cause health problems, such as starving and anorexia nervosa. In fact, according to CNN news, Miss America 2008 Kirsten Haglund suffered anorexia nervosa at the age of 12(Khorram). According to psychologist Phil McGraw, pageants are not realities but fantasies. Beauty pageants give so much importance to looks, costumes, and glamour. That is why women who want to live like beauty queens focus on these things more rather than focusing on more real and important things such as education, work, and family. Beauty pageants treat women as sex objects. Contestants are required to parade around the stage barely hiding anything under their bikinis. This is, obviously, for the eyes of male audience. To think about it, one possible and rational reason why these beauty pageants started in the first place is because men want entertainment. Look at how the number of male pageants is relatively much smaller than those of women beauty pageants. Tracking down the very first beauty pageant is hard, because long ago beauty pageants were just local events and often taken down by public protests. These public protests aimed to stop the pageants, because these pageants were done on dogs, birds, cats, and other domestic animals before. There was this

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concept that beauty pageants are for animals and that starring women on these pageants is like treating them as animals. However, the society changed and most people view beauty pageant queens as goddesses. Beauty pageants degrade their former contestants as well. Though this is not experienced by these former beauty pageant contestants in their early age, they experience depression later in life (Beauty Pageants). They are also exploited when they get to modeling agencies by being replaced by younger and more beautiful versions of them. Beauty pageants boost the confidence of women, but that statement is limited to those who acquire the physical attributes for beauty pageants. Everyone has their own definition of beauty and that each and every definition may be different from another. Every woman is beautiful in their own right.

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Works Cited Scott Lazerson. "A Miss Universe Judge Tells All". Forbes. Forbes, 2011. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. Khorram, Yasmin. "Miss America Kirsten Haglund opens up about her battle with anorexia."CNN. 16 Mar. 2012. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. <http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/16/health/miss-america-haglund-anorexia/index.html> "Long Term Effects on Woman". Beauty Pageants. n.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2013