Something changed here in the UK
In reality, with growing gender equality here in Britain it became apparent that valuing women primarily for their looks was inappropriate. Demeaning was the word most commonly used, it devalued women to little more than fashion accessories for men in the eyes of many. I have to confess, I too feel uncomfortable with the concept.
Too many countries seem to hold with the belief that attractiveness should lead to success, a person can get on better in life purely because they look the part.
Just think about that for a moment, look long and hard at it and how damaging a concept that is. One person is better in every way to another just because of genetic markers they have zero control over? So, the logic might go, brown haired people should automatically be better than red heads because of their hair colour? Clearly the assumption is flawed.
In the UK the pageants are all but banned. It’s nearly impossible to watch one except on a streaming service. Many of the judges, looking back, were really just lecherous men in need of some totty.
We’ve all seen those awful interviews meant to get to the core of the contestants personality which really just showed that beauty was just about their only attribute of note.
In some countries, the concept of beauty is so empowering that many employers will choose staff based primarily on it. With beauty comes that other little issue, ageism, nobody loves a fairy when she’s forty as the old song goes and it is so terribly true with many companies looking to fill their desks with beautiful people.
Don’t we just need to get away from this whole notion that beauty somehow makes anyone a better person? Is it healthy to label someone on nothing more than their looks. You go in the attractive queue, you go in the lesser queue and everyone else is too unattractive so just as well go home?
Does a beauty queen represent their town or country? No, of course not! If the UK (doesn’t happen) were to win a beauty contest, does it suddenly make Theresa May look more attractive? Does it boost the career prospects of all women? No, of course not and that there is the crux of it. Beautiful people, women, get hired but their career depends on their looks. Advancement is often elusive to them because, on looks alone, Sheila up in accounts isn’t going to hire them, she wants competent people who can do their job, not some beauty who is going to distract her male workers. So, it gets the foot in the door, on the bottom rung of a company and then the beauty, because that was the primary reason for getting the job, they get stuck.
I spoke to a really attractive guy once, I’ll talk to anyone me. He was mid 20’s and all alone in a bar. Gay, surrounded by gay guys. I asked him why someone as attractive as him didn’t have a swarm of guys around him. The answer was really sad … he told me that many men seemed to be scared of his attractiveness and wouldn’t talk to him. Those that did only wanted his body, they were not looking for a relationship. He said, it often felt like winning the lottery, all that money but a total inability to know which people want to be friends because they like you and which, the majority, because you had money.
That’s really sad isn’t it?
Now, I am not suggesting that attractive people do something to make themselves unattractive, that’s just silly. What I am getting at here is, highlighting attractiveness as a certain body shape, the exact right look is counter productive. As an intelligent species we should be beyond that, we should be able to think deeper than that.
Every person regardless of their physical appearance deserves the same chances in life. As I have demonstrated, putting extra value on beauty is also detrimental to them as well as those who are perceived not to make the beauty grade.
The crazy thing is, if we’re honest, we all have our own perception of beauty anyway. Why are we having it dictated to us by beauty pageants? That is a form of beauty, it is not the only form. Just think of those teenage girls who end up with eating disorders trying to be ‘beautiful’, those boys who see every female as though he’s a right to see her in a swimming costume?
Humans are better than this, we all deserve better. I honestly believe that our obsession with someone’s else’s version of beauty explains why so many actors and singers just look so much alike. Men give these girls jobs and careers, so rarely do girls who don’t meet the beauty bar level get on in music or acting, we can think of them ourselves it is so easy.
Maybe it is just now time to let these pageants go? Let the value we put upon women be because of why they are, not what they look like?
My mum was beautiful, I bet yours was too yet, she likely wouldn’t have got past the first stage of a beauty contest. Would we ever wanted to have swapped her for someone who did? No, that’s the real understanding of beauty, what is inside and only that.