Outrage nation

By Editorial Board
September 20, 2023
The kind of issues that lead to outrage in a country says a lot
about it. In Pakistan, it’s not violence against women or rampant
child abuse or lack of justice or lack of equality that will have
the morally righteous clutching their pearls but a beauty
pageant. Yes, a beauty pageant is what is important enough to
get the caretaker prime minister to take note of the matter. A
beauty pageant is apparently more important than the almost
daily stories of violence against women and children. A beauty
pageant is what threatens Pakistan’s morality. Case in point is a
small little storm in an overflowing teacup that took place a few
days back. The issue: a Pakistani woman all set to participate in
the Miss Universe contest for the first time. The issue took on –
as such issues do – a life of its own and eventually both the
caretaker prime minister and the caretaker information minister
had to ‘take note’ and clarify that the Pakistan government had
nothing to do with any Pakistani going to the event that will be
held in November.

Policing women’s choices is nothing new in the country. We

have seen everyone from politicians to clerics to educationsists
moralizing over women’s clothes, their rights, their duties. It may
not then be wrong to say that this was a reaction foretold in
many ways. While beauty pageants like Miss World and Miss
Universe (which is said to be more than 70 years old) have been
going on for years now and have received a fair share of
criticism, that critique has nothing to do with morality and
everything to do with women’s body image issues, the standards
of beauty women are held to and the impossible unrealistic
expectations of women being objectified not as humans but as
props. That is legitimate critique and it would be a shame if any
generation of women did not question such events. That said,
none of the critiques can possibly justify calling for bans and
blocks on events or persons going to such events, regardless of
their problematic undertones.

When outrage leads to calls for shutting down anything –

whether film or drama or even a beauty pageant – that is a sign
of an unhealthy and skewed debate. Pakistan already has a
power imbalance between those who take it upon themselves to
make the country more of a nanny state and those that are
yearning for some sense of freedom of expression. A beauty
pageant – with all its inherent contradictions and problems –
may not be appetizing to many, but is not the end of the world.
The real question is: when will Pakistani women’s bodies be
stopped being used as a battleground for opposing ideologies?
Perhaps a little less outrage over such matters and a little more
over the fact that people are taking their children out of school
because they can’t afford to educate them could be a start?