I would like to talk about beauty pageants, why I find them degrading to women and why in my opinion, they should be abolished. My main talk will be about miss Cameroon, although there are many others like miss Universe, miss teen USA, miss world and so on. While these beauty pageants encourage women to feel good about themselves, I feel they have many bad aspects as well. They focus more on a woman's appearances, rather than her intellectual capabilities.
Growing up, my friends and I loved watching beauty pageants and admiring the women sashay down the ramps. Miss Cameroon was my favorite (although I did not have much of a choice anyway, as the only television channel we had was CRTV🤦🏿). I would look forward to watching it every year.
I used to know lots of young girls and teens who had aspirations and dreams of being in these pageants. I did not even care much about being a part of some stupid competition. "Why should I put up myself to compete with a fellow woman"? I would wonder. Some girls and women felt that if they did not make it as contestants, they were not beautiful and gorgeous. They are so wrong about that. Girls, teens, women, ladies, all are beautiful and are enough.
I remember there was a time ( I can not recall when exactly) the miss Cameroon competition was to be shown on TV. Unfortunately for us, our Television set was not working properly. I could not afford to miss the show, so I had to rush to our neighbor to watch. It was usually either the tele or electricity..one reason or the other why I would almost miss it. Still, I more often than not managed to follow up.
Yes, I enjoyed the shows. The women were so gorgeous. Some of us felt they would never look that way no matter what, so did not aspire to go and compete, especially as most if not all of the contestants were usually tall, fair-skinned and thin. We imagined we would never be any of those things. Smooth skin, thin bodies, and beautiful hair. I must say most of the women who used to win were usually fair-skinned.."blinking ladies" as we would refer to them.
If you used to follow the winners of beauty pageants in African countries, they're usually fair-skinned women. Although in the last five or so years things have dramatically changed in favor of dark-skinned women, it was almost like the dark ones were unrecognized, or the judges had a preference for fair women? I dunno..
Nonetheless, I enjoyed watching women pull down each other by competing with their looks. Even as a child, I could see how these people did not represent the average person. The last time I watched it was in May 2008. I have not missed a thing ever since. What I do not understand is why the support for these “contests” still exist.
As I get older, I realise the unhealthy message that these pageants send out. Why don’t they include short, healthy, normal women too to participate? Why just thin and tall? The average woman is not even tall. The average Cameroonian woman isn't thin either. 🤨
As a woman, I do not think we need to be part of beauty pageants and all those shows to prove that we are beautiful. We do not need judges to score us on our beauty, how we walk, how we present ourselves while wearing a certain outfit, and we most definitely do not ever have to feel self-conscience and neglect our health because of other people’s thoughts and opinions; Starve ourselves to lose so much weight to look like those models and contestants on these pageants.
We are our own natural self and beautiful. We should not allow someone to belittle us by saying we need to focus on creating that image of beauty. We do not have to create beauty. We are, instantly, without others saying it.
We should all be holding each other up, not tearing each other down based on silly things like the thickness of our eyebrows.
Maureen Wepngong