This week the Internet broke after Miss Universe host Steve Harvey’s immediately legendary gaffe on live TV; announcing a winner and then having to redact seconds later, taking the crown from an understandably devastated Miss Columbia.
It was squirm-worthy viewing and the stuff magical memes are made of, but as the social media maelstrom swirled I didn’t give much weight to it. Sure, I was embarrassed for Harvey but he’s a comedian and historically a pretty self-deprecating guy and I trust he’ll be fine. Miss Columbia, instead of being a crowned Miss Universe we never hear from again (How many past winners can you name?), will have more media face time and a higher profile than had she actually won. I didn’t see any real losers there.
Harvey’s mistake aside, what I’ve been wondering for the last two days is why we are still holding beauty pageants in 2015? Don’t these perpetuate the most debilitating and hurtful stereotypes about what it means to be feminine and beautiful? Isn’t this stuff a Mad Men era holdover that we’ve all evolved beyond?
As women come ever closer to the White House, as they fight for and deservedly find ever greater respect in politics and entertainment and business and church life, these glitzy, vapid dog-and-pony shows seem like a medieval throwback, forever preserving women in a plastic Barbie doll blister pack where they are treated as nothing but hollow eye candy.
Sure, there are attempts by pageant organizers and supporters to give lip service to the contestant’s “talent, intelligence, and current events acumen”, but let’s not kid ourselves—these aren’t inner beauty pageants we’re watching or else no one would be in bikinis and heels. This is primarily and exercise in exterior evaluation, with participants occupying only the most narrow spectrum of weight and height and age specifications, and the most traditional definitions of physical beauty.
Beauty pageants seem to reinforce the rigid, constrictive gender roles that so many men and women have been working so hard to transcend, and viewing them on sash-wearing display here feels like rewinding progress.
It’s revealing that we have no comparable competitions for men, ones where we parade nearly naked guys around like meat to be ogled and compared and rated, and then toss them a few softball questions about world peace to make sure we’ve adequately acknowledged their “brains”, before banishing them to small town parade floats.
I simply think we can do better. I think beauty pageants have outlived their usefulness.
To be clear, this isn’t about the pageant contestants themselves, as they are obviously each complex, original, intelligent, beautiful human beings doing wonderful, important things in the world before, after, and off the stage. This is about that stage itself; about packaging women in a way that diminishes their diversity, most loudly celebrates their physicality, and reduces them to smiling, waving, sexualized robots.
It’s likely that many influential women have themselves participated in the pageant system earlier in life. I’m also certain many women have participated in such contests throughout their formative years and found them to be enjoyable, educational, perhaps even empowering experiences, but I can’t help but wonder if they don’t do a greater damage to the vast majority of those young girls, who for whatever reason aren’t deemed “pageant material”—those who don’t merit the title of Beauty Queen.
As a man, I realize that I’m terribly limited by the lenses I’m looking through. I could be missing something critical in my assessment here (most notably a female perspective and so I gladly welcome that). I certainly can’t assume to speak for women on this matter, but as someone who believes completely in gender equality, these pageants feel like dusty, sequined-covered museums of a time when men made all the rules and women always finished runner-up.
And whether in men or women, true beauty doesn’t need to be paraded in pageantry anyway. It simply, quietly, confidently rises up from our lives in ways that can’t be measured or quantified or graded.
Yes Steve Harvey goofed on stage this week, but the fact that it’s nearly 2016 and we’re still holding female beauty pageants, seems the real error here.
