by As a child growing up in the eighties, I used to watch Miss World. Or rather, my mother did. From her chintz chair, she would critique the contestants just as diligently as the judges. “Terrible legs,” she would frown. “Oh, Miss Puerto Rico has a great personality. Not too fat and not too thin.” And so began the not-so-subliminal messages that whether you entered one or not, if you were a woman, life would always be a beauty pageant.
My mother came of age in the 1950s, when societal expectations and a dearth of career options demanded that most women fixate on their beauty, if not exploit it, because they couldn’t exploit it their brains so easily. It was because beauty pageants were very popular in those days.
Beauty standards were also very narrow back then. When the American Miss Universe pageant began in 1952, its purpose was to anoint one woman as an ideal vision of beauty that everyone, regardless of nationality or race, would consider perfect. After 72 years, this concept is rightly criticized as being as reductive and outdated as the sparkling crown that sits atop the winner’s head.
But beauty pageants have shown, like viruses, that they can mutate, expanding their restricted parameters in an effort to what cynics called embarrassing PR, and organizers who would opine cultural relevance. This week, Carolina Shiino, 26, won the 56th Miss Japan beauty pageant, sparking a fierce debate in her country, because she was born in Ukraine.
“It was a dream,” she told reporters in perfect Japanese. Many called it a nightmare, pointing out that Japanese women already feel pressure to conform to Western beauty standards. Others defended the decision, saying that broadening the definition of what it means to be Japanese is a positive thing.
Those beauty pageants at the heart of the culture wars weren’t on anyone’s bingo card for 2024, but Shiino’s win sparked an important debate. Born in 1998, she moved to Japan at the age of five, after her Ukrainian mother remarried a Japanese man.
The first naturalized Japanese citizen to win, Shiino’s victory recalls a similar debate in 2015, when Ariana Miyamoto became the first biracial woman to be crowned Miss Japan, sharing an opinion on whether someone with a Japanese mother and father should be Eligible African American. .
But nationality and race are not the only controversial aspects of the modern beauty pageant: for some observers, so is gender. Last July, Rikkie Valerie Kolle became the first transgender woman to win Miss Netherlands in the pageant’s 94-year history, and the second transgender contestant to take part in Miss Universe.
“The journey started as an insecure little boy,” she told reporters. “And now I stand here as a strong, powerful and confident woman.” It may be worth noting that the Miss Universe Organization began to allow transgender women as contestants in 2012, during which time it was owned by Donald Trump (he sold the rights to the event in 2015 to the talent agency WME- IMG). It took another decade for the organization to expand its eligibility pool to include married women and married mothers.
But perhaps this is not surprising for a championship that has only had six black winners since its inception in 1952, the most recent being in 2019, when Miss South Africa’s Zozibini Tunzi won the title. “We are slowly moving to a time when women like myself can finally find a place in society, knowing that they are beautiful,” she said in her speech.
However enthusiastically try to adapt beauty pageants, their fans do not seem to adapt to them. Last December, a 20-year-old mathematics undergraduate, Eve Gilles, was crowned Miss France in front of a television audience of 7.5 million people, but she suffered immediate backlash because of her short hair.
“We are used to seeing beautiful Misses with long hair, but I chose an androgynous look,” she said after her victory, adding, “I want to show that the competition is changing and society too, that representation of women. diverse. [Every] a woman is different, we are all unique.”
How different single women are allowed to be, it seems, is still hotly debated. This isn’t the 1950s anymore. With so many other platforms available – especially through social media – the idea that the best way to fight for inclusion, diversity and visibility is through a beauty page is surely as old as the swimsuit round.
