Was burning some more time off by watching the miss universe pageant tonight. Several things made me think a little. Well, before anyone thinks I'm being hypocritical by first exposing myself to objectionable media content and then try to be the cynic I am, let's just say I was bored tonight and anyway I have a right of free speech on the blog which bears my name if I don't remember wrongly.
And no, I didn't think the pageant was all treating women as sex objects and mere vases and nothing else. Well, I think at least the cause of the whole pageant is actually worth something, perhaps not to us, but to some poor starving people somewhere around the world. (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here actually. I hope they actually do something useful with their title.)
But however, several things made me wonder how the whole pageant thing really worked.
Firstly, did anyone notice that the entire panel of judges were non-asian? I believe that beauty is subjective, i.e. different in degrees in different cultures. For example, the chinese would generally consider fairer girls pretty and so on. So I really wonder if it's fair at all to have a panel of judges purely from the western world to judge the pageant. I mean, just imagine if the judges were all asian. Do you seriously think none of the asian contestants would get through the first rounds in the finals?
And then there's the political/geographical advantages. I don't know about you, but on almost all, if not all the years of the pageants I've watched, the US contestant is bound to be in the final 5 or 10. Tell me about the evils of globalization. And of course not forgetting that the host country's contestant would be in on that list as well as some form of a thank-you-for-hosting-the-event gift. That's two spaces wasted on what's known as politically correct judging.
And next would be the esoteric terms used in the criteria - Confidence, Sophistication and Intelligence. Someone give me a definition of those words in a 7-word sentence please. Ha, just kidding, I doubt if that's even possible. It's more like everything is down to judicial discretion (a.k.a CLS).
Oh, and finally, how many of those contestants actually are born beautiful? I'd bet that they would have undergone some form of beautification which any skilled cosmetic surgeon can bring about. I think that beauty pageants are one of those events where unfairness is allowed, in the sense that it's definitely ok if the contestants are born beautiful naturally. But artificial man-made "beauty"? I have nothing against cosmetic surgeries or people who wish to go for them but I think it is inappropriate for the beauty queen of the universe to have obtained her title not because mother nature especially adored her but because she went for botox jabs and what have you. The very thought disgusts me.
Perhaps the way the pageant is judged or conducted is reflective of our society. I may be too cynical for you guys, but sometimes, the world does seem to be getting less real and more grey as the days pass.
