Miss Coconut Heads: On Beauty Pageants and the Absence of Substance
A sharp critique of Cameroon's proliferation of beauty pageants—from Miss Cameroon to product-branded contests—which the writer argues celebrate superficiality over intellect, originality, and the real contributions of women in the country. The piece argues that pageants fail to recognize or honor the substantive achievements of Cameroonian women across professions and walks of life.
I can’t stand beauty pageants. I’m sorry. I hate everything they stand for. What’s more annoying is that I receive a lot of forwarded links on my WhatsApp asking me to vote for so and so candidate for so and so beauty contest. Usually I would wait 5 mins then tell the person who sent it that I had voted for their sister/friend/cousin. On my free moments, I would click through the link, look at all the candidates and vote someone else. Someone who I thought was prettier than said sister/friend/cousin.
Yep, I’m that savage. My votes don’t come cheap. You either merit it or you don’t.
I normally would not have addressed this topic. I have kept my loathing of beauty pageants pretty much to myself for a long time, but with the resurgence of beauty pageants of all kinds, I have to air my mind. Look around you and count the number of beauty pageants used to promote products (Miss Orangina, Miss BioPharma), cultural events (Miss Nguon) and the tritest of all, Miss Cameroon.
Beauty pageants for me are just a moment of comedic relief when I can sit back and just laugh at how lecherous male judges are ogling brain-dead girls in skimpy outfits prancing around a stage. And what’s their biggest justification? “We are celebrating the woman.”
Dear people, I can tell you many different ways of celebrating the woman that does not involve her walking around in a bikini, or that does not require a pretty face to be the prerequisite to be celebrated as a woman. Sometimes, most of the contestants don’t even know WHY they are contesting. Some even put it on their professional resume. Good lawd! I’m still trying to find the correlation betwenn a beauty queen and a legal secretary. But, oh well…
I don’t know how many of you watched the last Miss Cameroon beauty pageant. After more than three hours of cat-walking and a number of awkward poses, the presenter hurriedly asked the contestants THE SAME question. “What will you do if elected?” Every one of them save one person, mentioned they were going to use their platform to fight Boko Haram. Good lawd! No originality. Each one as insipid as the other. The judges did not deem it fit to follow up with ‘HOW’ exactly these young ladies were going to fight Boko Haram. After all, they had wasted the last 3 hours on speeches, talking to Miss France (I still don’t understand what the hell she was doing there in the first place) and introducing musicians.
I am still waiting for a Miss Cameroon contest where a contestant will be asked what she thinks of Cameroon’s new trade partnership with the European Union and how she thinks it is going to affect our economy. If you think that question has nothing to do in a beauty pageant, then probably you should be rooting for Miss Zimbabwe.
During the Miss BioPharma contest, the winner sadly could not explain HOW she was going to be the brand ambassador of the different products. What happened to beauty and brains? Or just plain brains?
I really cannot stand beauty pageants. I’m sorry.
They do not project the image, nor celebrate the women I know. The ones I see everyday. My sisters, my friends, my aunties. Hardworking women. Doctors, social entrepreneurs, motivational speakers, cooks, scientists, engineers, teachers, lawyers, make-up artists, traders. The Kah Wallahs, the Imbolo Mbues, the Rebecca Enonchongs, the Monique Ntumgias, the Olivia Mukams, the Fese Ndumbes. Real women; everyday women who inspire hundreds and thousands of other women daily and in a tangible manner are not bogged down by beauty standards that are measured on the white man’s beauty scale.
That is the type of “beauty” pageant that I look forward to.
Wandji Wilfred
Written at the end of 2017, when beauty pageants were a visible and recurring feature of Cameroonian media and consumer culture. The post emerges from a moment of growing frustration with the normalization of these contests as platforms for social messaging, particularly around security and national issues, despite their structural investment in physical appearance as the primary measure of value.
The essay captures a wider skepticism about how women's visibility and celebration are framed in public discourse—a tension that remains unresolved. It names a real gap between the narrative aspirations pageants claim (female empowerment, social advocacy) and their actual mechanics (aesthetic judgment, lack of depth). The piece's insistence on centering ordinary professional women rather than pageant contestants is a quiet argument for rethinking how societies choose to spotlight and honor women's contributions.