The real issue about beauty pageants is not obscenity, but the exploitation of the fair sex. Shouldn’t there be more to a woman’s life than the size of this or that? Such events are about little else other than money

THE stunning Miss Ireland, Rosanna Davison, was crowned Miss World 2003 recently in the Chinese city of Sanya. The new Miss World, aged 19, crooned, “I am thrilled and delighted. It is a great honour and I want to thank everyone who has supported me, specially my parents.” For China to host this event was a great honour, so reported the media. It showed them in good light, opening up and willing to have more interaction with the rest of the world.

A $12 million convention hall was specially built for the World pageant amid hopes that the picturesque but poor Chinese city would be put on the global tourism map. Sanya is China’s southernmost city, and is a palm-shaded resort on Hainan Island lying some 2,700 miles southwest of Beijing.

Interestingly, the last and only time that the city made headlines was when a damaged US Navy surveillance plane had made an emergency landing there in 2001 after colliding with a Chinese fighter jet which resulted in the two nations getting critically enmeshed in a controversy regarding who will say sorry for the mistake and how!

China’s entry in the Miss World competition as a host was an obvious attempt at wanting to be recognized as a global player. The Mayor of Sanya, Chen Ci, had stated prior to the event that the authorities had spent “quite a lot of money, but the consequence will be huge”.

The Sanya city government apparently spent $31 million to repave and repair roads, highways and bridges. With most residents still making their living from farming or fishing, the expenditure was divided between the government and private donations that included the $4.8 million license fee to hold the pageant. Private money also paid for the $12 million venue called the Beauty Crown Cultural Centre. In return, the city must have made over $100 million besides being showcased to a television audience estimated by the contest’s London-based organizers at two billion — easily the best tourism promotion any resort can hope for.

Tickets for the event made good sales even though the prices — ranging from $80 to $2,000 — were well out of the reach of the city dwellers whose monthly urban salaries average $100. With every element of the event elevated to such high levels, it doesn’t take much to conclude that the entire game is about economics. Miss World is an international beauty pageant founded in Great Britain by Eric Morley in the year 1951. It started as the Festival Bikini Contest, as the glamour of swimwear was gaining ground at the time. The title of Miss World was actually awarded by the press to the contest. Though it was originally meant as a one-time event, the popularity it gained soon made it an annual feature. After all, who wouldn’t have wanted to watch semi-nude women parading ‘willingly’ in all their glory? Then, perceiving its financial benefits, the media too jumped in in a big way, and in 1959 the BBC began broadcasting the competition. The pageant’s popularity grew as the popularity of television grew.

At that age of discovery when feminism and lost morals were experimenting fusion, controversies entered the fray and a number of pageants in the 1960s and 1970s were marred by scandals. The 1960s included tabloid coverage of nude photographs of some contestants and the alcoholic excesses of the winners.

In 1973, however, the first winner from the USA, Marjorie Wallace, was forced to resign because of the discovery of her involvement with a string of high-profile men. The 1974 winner too had to resign four days after winning her title because it became known that she was a single mother. To hone it into a cultural event of sorts, a clean image of the contestants was necessary.

It was in the 1980s that the pageant gave itself a new turn with the slogan, Beauty With a Higher Purpose, and tests of ‘intelligence’ and ‘personality’ were added to it. By the 1990s, the pageant was reaching two billion viewers from almost every country in the world, and there was no doubt left that it was big money they were talking about.

Almost half-a-century later, the brain behind the pageant, Eric Morley, passed away in late 2000, when the competition moved on into the hands of his wife, Julia Morley. The prize money for the winner now amounts to $225,000, whereas it began in 1951 with $1,000.

With woman’s individuality going through many contradictory phases as well, the last century has confused her status not just in the eyes of men, but also for women in their own minds. The early part of the twentieth century saw many fastidious ideas concerning women, and their code of conduct crumbled (specially in the West) as feminism gained ground.

Fashion outlines were re-defined by designers like Mary Quant in 1954 and Twiggy in 1966 as hair became shorter and shorter and do did the hemlines. Liberation of this kind raised concern among stoic moralists who said these changes were responsible for the moral decline that was beginning to take root in society. This almost negated the true liberation gained by women in the early 1920s when they had won over the right to vote (in England) and were also finally allowed to file for divorce — actions unheard of till then. It took Pakistan another four decades to make necessary amendments in the Muslim Family Law!

Changes in a woman’s status have inconsistently been negative and positive. When lifestyles changed after 1966 with the advent of ‘the pill’, a social revolution came about when women negated their own femininity and cried to be counted as liberated, and burnt their female garb in public, denouncing restriction of any kind.

Now, years later, the long and arduous road for women still hasn’t completely defined her identity in the eyes of men, as on the one hand she is either treated as an object to be bandied about by men for the sake of their base desires, while, on the other, she is made to shed her femininity to be recognized as a feminist and be considered equal to men.

Because of this polarization, she is yet to gain the united strength which should have acclaimed her unquestionably as a thinking, feeling entity with a sovereign mind just like (or better than) that of their male counterparts, deserving of equal respect.

A contest like the Miss World pageant, where the worth of women is measured, above any other criterion, through anatomical dimensions, is perhaps as disparaging an assessment of women as can be overtly made.

Exhibitionism is described in the Oxford dictionary as; “the mental condition that makes a subject want to expose their gender discerning organs in public and one who likes to attract attention by such acts”. And voyeurism, of course, is the pleasure begotten from watching such acts ‘exhibited’ by others. Do these contests not fit the above description of one, and satiate the want of the other?

Though for the past three years the contestants are not made to parade in front of the judges in their swimming costumes, the pre-final events include a Beach Beauties ‘display’ where the barest minimum is needed for the final look-over before a ‘Miss Sportswoman’ is decided. Then there is also a Miss Personality contest in which a contestant is awarded for her interpersonal skills. Ironically, the cosmetic changes that have been made to the initial outline of the competition prove that the underlying tones are belittling.

In recent years, beauty contests have come under critical fire from feminists in particular, as the events stand for commercialism which promises immense revenue generation simply by fanning male needs at the cost of ‘commodifying’ women.

In India, when a coalition of Indian feminists, farmers, leftists and cultural and religious activists launched protests against the contest that was held in Bangalore in 1996, the key complaint against the pageant was that it demeans women and promotes cosmetics and plastic surgery. The editor of the Indian edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, Mrs Simran Bhargava, had stated, “The moral behind Miss World is that the thinnest woman with the fewest wrinkles wins — which excludes 99 per cent of women.” Other activists had also asserted that the generous display of flesh by the contestants was obscene.

The real issue, however, is not obscenity; it is exploitation in a ‘beautiful’ clothing. Shouldn’t there be more to a woman’s life than the size of the hips, the waist, the size of this and the size of that? Critics have repeatedly insisted that the event is about nothing more than money where millions of dollars are generated by an event watched by over two billion people around the world. Some feminists and left-wing protesters, in fact, find the contest too much of a joke to even warrant action.

Politics of one sort or another has never been far from Miss World. India, for in stance, had an unprecedented run of global titles, and in six years, as many as five Indians won the coveted Miss Universe or Miss World crowns, while four others remained runners-up. Many this side of the border held the view that it was a political gimmick to give prominence to India.

Then in Sun City, South Africa, in 2001, before an estimated 1.2 billion television viewers, the first black girl — Miss Nigeria, Agbani Darego — was crowned Miss World, after she beat out 92 other contestants for the title. “Black is beautiful,” she said before being crowned. It was around the same time when Halle Berry was given the prestigious Academy Award for best actress, and many said that these too were simply just politically correct moves to make.

Riots also plagued the Miss World 2002 show which was to be held in Nigeria, but was shifted to London instead. The reason was a controversial article in the Nigerian press that hurt Muslim sentiments. The riots resulted in the death of 220 people. Incidentally, the recent spate of controversy concerns the 2003 winner of Miss World title, Roasanna Davison from Ireland, who is the daughter of singer Chris De Burgh. It has been reported that one of the judges of the final round was De Burgh’s close friend. The allegations are being proven by the argument that one of the judges had told reporters three hours earlier that Miss Rosanna would be the winner!

The Miss World contest has come a long way from its first year and now there is emphasis laid — at least for the benefit of the viewers/onlookers — on the fact that the participating beauties are not just pretty faces, but have accomplished something in some craft. Most are now even hopeful professionals aspiring to become lawyers, teachers, journalists etc., and are asked a tad degree more intelligent questions than the earlier, ‘what is the colour of the sky’ kind! And, also unlike its first year, the contestants do not parade on the catwalk for its audiences in swimsuits anymore. But one thing certainly hasn’t changed. The stakes are getting higher and higher, and the pageant is getting more and more tuned to media needs. Viewers this time were able to send in additional votes through the internet during the pre-taped swimsuit competition, and a live on-stage internet-driven top-ten scoreboard was updated to reflect the voting.

But, at the same time, what is getting stranger for many to accept is that how from among the 360 billion women of the world can anyone truly judge the most beautiful one of all, and attach a price tag to beauty?