By Msonter Anzaa
The most
controversial thing about the beauty pageant is the kind of beauty it
represents. In the manner organized, the thing that stands out most times is the
preference for nudity, crudely demonstrated by skirts so short that they reveal
the junction of the buttocks and the thighs; trousers so tight and blending so
harmoniously with the skin colour that you would think the individual is
actually putting on nothing, and breasts, dangling arrogantly at the audience.
This is hardly our indigenous idea of beauty. It’s an aberration of both
cultural and religious values. The winning criteria seem to consist in the most
ability to do wild things and get the audience “crazy”. This has a number of
consequences that I’d point out in the proceeding paragraphs.
First, it
wastes time, and I know what I am writing. I have come across a number of ladies
in my own corner of the university campus who take time to practice skills that
I think are meant to enhance their chances of becoming one of the uncountable
campus “queens”. It might sound ludicrous, but that’s what it is. I have seen
ladies who practice how to walk the “beautiful” way. While I am not an authority
on these things, I can say with a level of authority that the African concept of
beauty is not anything like this. We do not learn beauty. We are beautiful by
what values, attributes and character we have. We may have learnt these values,
attributes and character, but certainly not because we hope to be beautiful.
Instead, it is the beauty already inherent in us that makes us admire these
values and want to acquire them. And these wouldn’t emphasize how we walk about;
what steps we take. It is serious, the level of self-deception and fake grandeur
we exult in. For instance, we encourage our “queens” to thrill us with acquired
steps performed on intolerably high-heeled shoes. In reality however, this kind
of beauty hardly ever goes beyond the stage. So who are we deceiving?
Second, this
concept of beauty promotes wild values and ideas that harass the serenity of the
indigenous African society. With the arrival of the beauty pageant, our language
too has changed. We now come across scantily dressed ladies whom before now
would be considered awkward and tell them they are looking “sexy,” or more
diluted but no less out of place, “beautiful”. Then a craze to be “beautiful” by
our little sisters according to this new standard, has led to unspeakable
scenes. When you come across a lady doing strange things and you have a way of
asking, you would hear that she has an ambition of becoming a “queen”. We now
learn to chew and split-splat
chewing gum; to position our lips perpendicular to each other. It’s a sign of
beauty; it could win you a crown and fame! We go to tailors and tell them how
far our skirts must not go; we choose trousers deliberately made not to fully
cover our buttocks no matter how hard you pull them up to the waist. Their front
zips too are not meant to zip up. With these, you are on your way to becoming
the next campus girl to hit the throne.
I must say
that this trend has also brought with it a mad rush to copy things whose origin
we know not. Anything we see on stage, we copy it. In fact, it now looks like if
a popular musician or actor or actress puts on something in front of the
cameras, it becomes a new definition of beauty. Swag;
that’s what it is, and everyone has got his own. Soon, it will become our
“queen’s” royal dress. And what we love to call beauty is actually, in honest
terms, a symptom of moral degeneration and corruption engineered by pornographic
tendencies.
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