The Quaint Custom of Beauty Pageants, Part 3

     In the first two parts of this series, I showed that beauty pageants are exercises in futility.  The system of judging all but determines that real beauty and talent will be eliminated from consideration, and that in all other respects, beauty pageants are a barbaric custom based on objectification of women.  

     The final round in the competition is judged on the basis of the contestants' personalities.  The women are judged by such standards as shallowness, glibness of speech, and hypocrisy.  Remember that some of these beauty pageants, to disguise their true intent, are called "scholarship" pageants, as though they are designed to choose scholars deserving of higher education. 

     This round has two parts.  In the first, the judges will converse with each contestant in private. A conversation lasting no more than a few minutes is expected to reveal to the judges everything they need to know about whether the contestant deserves a higher education.

     I couldn’t tell you the subject of the private conversation the contestant would have with a judge. Since the conversation is private, I think that the judges are not as interested in what she says as they are in what she can keep from saying. You can imagine what her chances would be if she told the judges that 9/11 was an inside job.  

     Once the contestants, in private, have assured the judges that they won't spill the beans about 9/11 or question global warming, the approved contestants move to the next step in this quasi-masonic process. I'm referring, of course, to the obligatory public display of insincerity. Each one of a certain number of finalists—probably five—will be asked a question which probably will have nothing to do with the scholarship candidate’s chosen field of study. Thoughtful answers will count against the contestant, for several reasons:

1. They might be controversial;

2. They probably would not be understood by the average person who watches that kind of event; and

3. The answers are supposed to be heartwarming rather than informative.

     Her answer must be as pleasing as possible to as many of the judges as possible without going over anyone’s heads. Her answer must appeal to the lowest common denominator, and she must be glib in her delivery.

     To demonstrate this, let’s revisit what is probably the most painful memory of a young girl’s life. I’m referring to the Miss Teen U.S.A. contest, in which Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina, was asked, “Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the U.S. on a world map. Why do you think this is?” Her embarrassing answer is recounted in a video clip from the corporate-owned media program the Today Show.

     Please notice two things in particular in this clip  below.  For one, Caitlin's face is not covered with more make-up than Bozo the clown, as it was in the Miss Teen USA Pageant.  Looking natural, she looks great.  For another, even though she had a day or so to come up with a different answer to the pageant interviewer's question, her answer is still shallow, vacuous, and obviously insincere.  That is, her revised answer is the sort of answer that would have pleased the pageant judges.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQKNvPn3V-8

     If you do a Google video search for "dumb blonde," her gaffe comes up in third place.  Do an image search, and she's number one.  

     I really think that it was an unfair question and that she got a bum rap for not coming up with a heartwarming answer. Wouldn’t it be more productive if the judges bothered to do their homework and ask the contestants questions related to their areas of expertise? For that matter, if she had given an intelligent, informed answer, she would have been toast. Here’s what she could have said:

     “I personally believe that Americans are unable to do so because most geography teachers are so boring that their students could learn more in a cave. Most school administrators have so little respect for geography as a course that they think that anybody can teach it. Instead of assigning geography classes to teachers with a real passion for the subject, they assign them to teachers who can fit the classes into their schedules. Most Americans really love geography even if they don’t know it. They really love books and movies about travel and people in other lands, and they’re eager to learn about other cultures. Unfortunately, when they enter a geography class, the teacher has them memorize national capitals, population densities, where stuff is on a world map, and a lot of other meaningless trivia they can easily find on line if they wanted to know it. Students’ eyes glaze over and they don’t learn anything that they don’t quickly forget. If geography teachers taught students what they really wanted to know, students would eagerly learn about other people and their cultures. They might even realize that some of the practices of so-called third-world cultures make more sense than this dumb-old contest we’re having tonight. They’d develop a deep appreciation for the different peoples of the world and their concerns, and this increased understanding would help to promote (sigh) world peace.”

     You can imagine what a beauty contestant’s chances would be if she gave an answer like that one. Even the prattle about world peace wouldn’t sway them.

     In case you're wondering whatever became of the would-be scholar Caitlin Upton, her Chickipedia biography isn't much more informative than her Wikipedia bio or any other bio.  They all say that she "planned" or "plans" to attend Appalachian State University to study graphic design.  Apparently, her failure to win the scholarship has put her educational plans on hold while she struggles to make a living as a fashion model, either in North Hollywood or (yuk) for Donald Trump in New York.  Baseline said that she actually attended Appalachian State University, but I couldn't find any source saying that she had graduated.  Maybe ASU's courses in geography, logic, and elocution are overly difficult.

     One must wonder how many would-be Nobel Prize recipients missed out on educational opportunities due to their failure to give properly insincere answers in a "scholarship" pageant.  Probably none.  Somehow, I don't think she would have found a cure for cancer if she had won the "scholarship."

     Beauty contests are a dumb idea from the get-go. Truly beautiful women don’t stand a chance of winning the beauty portion of the contest. Truly talented women don’t stand a chance of winning the talent competition. The “personality” portion of the show tends to reward personality traits that no human being should possess.

     I wouldn’t favor abolishing beauty contests. Participating in them or watching them should be a private decision. My private decision is to change channels or turn off the television and spend my time doing something more productive. If the idea of having beauty contests were only recently introduced, wouldn’t you think it was bizarre?
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The Quaint Custom of Beauty Pageants, Part 2

     In the first part of this three-part series, I examined four features that most national and international beauty pageants have in common.  In each area, the beauty pageant, or scholarship pageant, or whatever the promoters call it, fails to deliver what the promoters promise.  In this second part of the series, I examine the "beauty" and "talent" competitions, which all but doom the chances of winning for most beautiful or talented contestants.

     Seriously. Think about the famous women who are said to be world-class beauties. With few exceptions, most of them have some facial feature that a minority of people would call ugly. To most other observers, though, each of these features is the woman's most appealing feature.     

     Think of Anne Hathaway’s wide-set eyes, Elle MacPherson’s impenetrably dark eyes, Karen Mok’s large teeth, Angelina Jolie’s full lips, or Julia Roberts’s wide mouth. People who don’t find those features appealing might say that Anne Hathaway’s eyes were practically on the sides of her head; that Elle MacPherson’s eyes were spooky, like an android’s; that Karen Mok could eat an ear of corn through a picket fence; that Angelina Jolie’s lips look like two slabs of raw liver; or that Julia Roberts’s mouth reminds you of a crocodile.

     A woman whose face had all those features would look like a monster. With just one of these features, she can be a world-class beauty. Given a panel of, say, seven judges, probably one of them would give any one of these aforementioned beauties low enough marks to cause a blandly attractive woman to win that part of the competition.

     Let me give you an example of two former beauty contestants versus a beautiful young woman who wouldn’t stand a chance in a beauty contest.

     In Taiwan, there’s a female singing and acting group called S.H.E. The name stands for Selina, Hebe, and Ella. Selina and Hebe were teenage beauty contestants, and they have the generic prettiness of beauty contestants. Ella was never in a beauty contest, and she’s noted for a tomboyish appearance; yet she was always the most popular member of the group, and many people consider her the most attractive of the three. Now that Hebe is 28 and the others are 30, Selina and Hebe are still generically pretty, but Ella is a radiantly beautiful woman. She still probably wouldn’t stand a chance in a beauty contest because her face is rounder than most judges prefer.

     Now let’s come to requirement #6 of what it takes to win a (ahem!) “scholarship” contest.

     Once the leg and cleavage part of the competition is over, the contestants have to compete on the basis of something else that has nothing to do with scholarship. With tongue-in-cheek, it’s called the talent competition. All the contestants display some degree of training or practice at what they do, but it’s quite a stretch to call it talent. Rarely is it even entertaining, unless you happen to have a perverse sense of humor—like the people who deliberately watch terribly made movies for the express purpose of laughing at how bad they are. The trouble is, these performances are not bad enough to be risible, but they don't show enough talent to be interesting. Let’s face it: technical proficiency is not the same thing as talent.

     Among a panel of judges, true talent would be doomed to failure, and for the same reason that a world-class beauty would have no chance in a beauty contest. Talent involves creativity. True creativity will please some people but offend others. Low marks from just one judge out of seven would doom a contestant’s chances of winning. Only the least objectionable material—that is, the lowest common denominator—has a chance of winning.

     If you think I’m kidding, compare the two videos below. In the first, a national beauty contestant with a piano is displaying the high degree of technical proficiency that passes for talent at these events.  



     Chances are, you didn't watch all of it.  In the second video clip, Chico and Harpo Marx are displaying their talents on a piano.  Chances are, you will watch all of it.

  

     A beauty contestant playing with talent like Chico's and Harpo's would not have a chance of winning the talent competition. A low mark from even one of the judges would kill a talented contestant’s chances of winning.

     In the third and final article in this series, I’ll treat the “personality” portion of beauty contests. The kind of personality that’s rewarded is not the kind of personality that most men would want to marry.  I don't blame the contestants; I blame the judges.  Their questions and expectations are unfair.

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