Pageants: What Manner of Beauty? 2

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.

To be continued

Read also Pageants: What Manner of Beauty? 3
                   Pageants: What Manner of Beauty? 1