Just Like That | The irrelevance of beauty pageants for women
Women need the respect of men, and not their devaluation as commodities to be judged for their exterior attributes.
Are beauty competitions still relevant? I know that many people—especially men—will say: ‘Why not?’. And yet there is an equally strong counterpoint of view. Such pageants began first in America in 1921. Then, women were judged squarely on their physical attributes and paraded themselves to be judged on this criterion. Since then, beauty contests have proliferated across the world. The major international ones are Miss Universe, Miss World, and Miss International. In addition, almost every country has their own competitions, either as stand-alone events or to select the nominee for the international events.
In recent times, an attempt has been made to expand the yardstick to judge aspirants by including marks for intelligence, personality, character and talent. It is a tokenistic and feeble attempt. Competitors come prepared with pat and prepared answers, and the tests themselves are woefully insufficient to judge these traits. So essentially these competitions remain what their original intent was: to judge women for their conventional beauty, in terms of vital statistics, looks, height—essentially their body.
But beauty is skin deep. And women have come a long way since when they could be commodified for their conventional beauty. In any case, what is the definition of beauty? One response is the cliché: Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. Perhaps true, but have beholders — the vast audience that watches these glamour events — remained static in their expectations and value systems? Or with the advent of infinitely greater gender equality and self-worth in women, have beholders also changed? Not only women but also men, who now seek in the opposite sex much more than the size of their waist, the angle of their noses, the length of their eyelashes and the proportion of their breasts.
What, after all, do men find attractive in women? And women in men? These are highly subjective questions but extensive surveys have revealed surprising results. It appears that men — at least the half-intelligent ones — like women who are self-confident, professionally qualified or successful, are intelligent and have their own opinions, and are capable of passion, certainly, but also kindness, empathy, love and companionship.
Women too, such surveys reveal, look far more for self-confidence, humour, kindness, intelligence, honesty, passion, and masculinity in men, of which beards — strangely enough — figure prominently. Good looks and figures, or brawn and muscles, matter in the case of both women and men respectively, but they hardly figure at the top of the wish list.
The truth is that beauty is much deeper than the exterior attributes of women, judged in competitions largely driven by the lure of commercial profit, advertisements and the vast empire of the beauty industry. Men too have contests based on muscle power, but these are more fitness competitions, and frankly—from the feedback I have got from women—the site of men with bulging nerves and hormone-enhanced abs preening around in underwear, is fairly unappealing. But to rate women—by far the intelligent sex—only on body parts is an insult to the dignity and esteem of this talented species.
Besides, the whole notion of judging somebody on the accident of birth is so dated that it begs the imagination that it still survives. Purely in conventional terms, very good-looking parents can have less than good-looking daughters, and not-so-good-looking parents can have attractive ones. This is purely a game of biological roulette, especially when attractive or less attractive have themselves become relative categories. Moreover, sex appeal, for both men and women, may lie in reasons which have little to do with the exterior physicality of the person.
None of this means that beautiful women are necessarily dumb, or less so are bright. Beautiful women can be very intelligent, kind and caring — as can those less so — and maybe breathtaking to behold. But what it does mean is that the definition of beauty needs serious revisiting.
The noted art historian and scholar, Stella Kramrisch, said that in the Hindu theory of rasa or inner essence, ‘beauty is less a property of things, and more an experience and a state of being’. The ancient and widely used expression ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’, wherein, if Shiva represents Brahman, and Brahman is unalloyed bliss, and if the pulsating cosmic consciousness of Brahman is the only truth, then a link is established between joy and beauty —sundaram. Beauty is thus linked with joy, and joy can never be restricted only to superficial exteriors.
In the complex world of relationships, there is a four-letter word — love — and, perhaps even more importantly, a seven-letter one — respect. Love, without mutual respect, is unlikely to survive. But where there is respect, even if love may be less dominant in the first instance, it will arise and last.
Women need the respect of men, and not their devaluation as commodities to be judged for their exterior attributes. The dated tradition of beauty contests for women is an idea that has long outlived its relevance.
Pavan K Varma is author, diplomat, and former Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha). Just Like That is a weekly column where Varma shares nuggets from the world of history, culture, literature, and personal reminiscences. The views expressed are personal
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